The Dead Weather, another band of the hyper-musical and vastly-talented Jack White, released their second album last week called "Sea Of Cowards." Critic-of-shag-hair-and-long-tooth David Fricke reviewed it for Rolling Stone. I review his review while reviewing, for your review.
David Fricke:
The second album by the Dead Weather, Jack White's current singing-drummer gig and gothic-blues holiday, is a rock of action — nothing but action. There is barely room to breathe, much less sing along, in these vicious twists and blitzkrieg segues. "Blue Blood Blues" is a furious pileup of Jack Lawrence's grunting fuzz bass, Dean Fertita's abrasive skidding guitar and bizarre doo-wop vocal pepper, pushed around by White's mule-kick outbursts at his kit. "I'm Mad" zigzags between fire-dance delirium and drunken-Godzilla stomp, with jolts of abused synthesizer and vocalist Alison Mosshart's she-devil vengeance. Technically, these 11 tracks are songs, with titles and hooks. The effect, though, is more like a precisely arranged parade of spasms, blasted at you in a kind of aural IMAX. Last year's Horehound had the same feral air. But the moving parts on Sea of Cowards — the distortion on Fertita's guitar riffs in "Die by the Drop"; the clang of White's pie-plate-cymbal crashes in "Hustle and Cuss"; his and Mosshart's incantatory bursts and lost-soul harmonies — come faster, meaner and fatter. There are more single-worthy tunes on White's records with the Raconteurs; in the White Stripes, he prefers his blues with limits. But with this band, White lets himself go over the top. Don't be too cool to go along.
The first thing I want to do is remove all the hyphenated hyperbole in this single-paragraph overview of Fricke's. Let me stack them here for you:
gothic-blues holiday
mule-kick outbursts
fire-dance delirium
drunken-Godzilla stomp
she-devil vengeance
pie-plate-cymbal crashes
lost-soul harmonies
Now, I'm taking out the non-hyphenated excitement language:
rock of action
vicious twists
blitzkrieg segues
furious pileup
bizarre doo-wop vocal pepper
grunting fuzz bass
abrasive skidding guitar
parade of spasms
abused synthesizer
aural IMAX
feral air
incantatory bursts
The deflated and highly-edited-by-ME outcome:
The second album by the Dead Weather, Jack White's current singing-drummer gig is nothing but action. There is barely room to breathe, much less sing along. "Blue Blood Blues" is Jack Lawrence and Dean Fertita pushed around by White. "I'm Mad" zigzags vocalist Alison Mosshart. Technically, these 11 tracks are songs, with titles and hooks. The effect, though, is more like a precisely arranged blast at you, like last year's Horehound, but the moving parts on Sea of Cowards come faster, meaner and fatter. There are more single-worthy tunes on White's records with the Raconteurs; in the White Stripes, he prefers his blues with limits. But with this band, White lets himself go over the top. Not too cool.
My apologies to David Fricke and Jack White, but hey.
© Copyright 2008- Marianne Spellman