the dead weather: sea of cowards

We’re living in an era of coalitions. There was a time when there was nothing so naff as a supergroup, but these days the music scene is inundated with them. Jack White is doubly culpable. Not only has he been responsible for two albums with The Raconteurs, he’s now reassembled his other “other” band The Dead Weather, in which he shares vocals with The Kills’ Alison Mosshart, for a hasty second album, barely a year after their first – the embarrassingly pedestrian Horehound.

White seems to like colour coding his bands, and The Dead Weather are definitely BLACK. Put together over just a few weeks in White’s Nashville studio, Sea Of Cowards is a noisy, dark take on blues-rock with gothic overtones. Down and dirty Led Zep-isms root down and smother any subtleties, and at times descend into moments of piercing racket. Mosshart’s take on the blues shout is a distortion-drenched howl given full rein on all but a couple of the songs here. Unlike the rather mogadon style she has cultivated in her other band, this is a shriek rather than a murmur. It’s often tricky to tell her vocals from White’s, as she seems to have picked up most of his characteristic tics; indeed, The Dead Weather was formed after she assumed his position at the mic when he lost his voice at a Raconteurs gig.

As a band they seem unafraid of rock clichés, which seems odd when White has previously built his career on messing with the listener’s expectations. Sea Of Cowards sounds like a heavy swampy Southern blues jam session rather than a considered or nuanced record. There’s even a nasty multi-tracked guitar solo on the otherwise forgettable ‘Gasoline’ to remind you that they are here to rock out and do little else. ‘The Difference Between Us’ at first offers some respite, with a synth-based intro promising a lot more than the song eventually delivers, but the album swiftly degenerates into the acid rock riffage of ‘I’m Mad’. Lead single ‘Die By The Drop’ actually improves for being placed mid-album, a position which highlights the fact that, of all the tracks, it has the most light and shade.

Worst of all is White’s tendency to repeatedly bash the hell out of his ride cymbal on virtually every track. This rapidly becomes grating and, when added to his trademark staccato shout, which Mosshart has also mastered, just plain irritating. The rather tired closer ‘Old Mary’ leaves an overall impression of nothing more lasting than the brief, bitter tang of an accidental swig of sour milk. It won’t kill you, but it’s not really something you’ll want to repeat.

[Third Man/Warner Bros.; May 10, 2010]

Written by: Lucy Brouwer

Tags: sea of cowards, the dead weather

This entry was posted on Friday, May 21st, 2010 at 10:05 am and is filed under albums & EPs, reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.