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There's no joke here--just mountains of chest-rattling primal rock designed to reassert the elemental power of the four-piece rock group. Mission accomplished.
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White's drums duke it out with Dean Fertita's guitar, mostly below the belt. Alison Mosshart doffs her s&m drag to suffer and yelp. Jack Lawrence plays bass. Fierce.
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The foursome weave a dizzying web of traditions into their own rough-hewn sound, dragging vestiges of alt-rock, punk and blues through the mud to achieve an album rife with brash dissonance.
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Alternative PressThere's no denying the quartet know how to work a mighty groove as well as set up atmospheres similar to bands remanded to the faded pages of old record-collecting magazines. [July 2009, p.126]
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MojoAs you hit repeat to hear Horehound for the umpteenth time, what's remarkable is that these 11 tunes, with their sonic curveballs and causl vim, suggest that a second Dead Weather LP would be almost as welcome as the White Stripes' seventh. [Jul 2009, p.90]
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While the Dead Weather might not necessarily surpass the accomplishments of its impressive pedigree, it’s certainly more uncompromising, brutal, menacing, honest.
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With Raconteurs bassist Jack Lawrence and guitarist-organist Dean Fertita helping out, the pair cut Horehound in three weeks, but these are all top-notch songs, rooted in Seventies dirtbag rock.
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The debut is by no means a hit-packed record, pop is firmly on the backburner here and thrillingly it's precisely this lack of obvious choruses and instead the bizarre little instrumental interludes, spooky stripped down ballads which build and build and attacking grooves that will have you coming back time and time again to it.
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The propulsive 11-track Horehound finds the White Stripes and Raconteurs frontman every bit as able on the drums as he is on guitar.
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The first half of Horehound is just weird enough to be utterly mesmerizing, a series of ominous, fuzzed-out psycho-blues riffs that climax in the tremendous Rush-meets-Jay-Z rave-up of 'Treat Me Like Your Mother.' But creative disintegration floods the record's latter regions with less captivating bump-'n'-grindhouse grooves.
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The songs on Horehound don't so much rock as writhe, reinstituting the idea of the blues as a sinister, morally corrupting force that's as much the province of voodoo priests and witch doctors as musicians.
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The Dead Weather is a true collaboration, with each band member providing songs (along with input into one another’s songs), and this bunch is talented enough to make even the tracks that are all mood sound just about right.
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Horehound doesn’t sound like the first album from a tossed-off side project; it crackles with the intensity of a band that has been together longer than a few months.
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Horehound isn't White Stripes tea-party cutesy, and it's not Raconteurs good-times eclectic--it's nothing but riffs and 'tude all the way through.
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Given the fact that the Dead Weather formed on a whim and recorded these songs in a matter of weeks, Horehound is a compelling album, and one that shows that the band's members bring out the best in each other, albeit in unexpected ways.
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The tracks blister with attitude and grit, but the persistent monochrome grows a bit exhausting all coughed out at once. The bitter sandstorm could stand more punctuation, even if it did make Horehound less terrifying.
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This album showcases the fact that every member stepped up to this creative challenge. A thoroughly enjoyable departure until we hear from Jack and Meg.
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It’s a maiden voyage with a few kinks that need to be worked out. One promising aspect is White’s new pet project, The Kills singer Alison Mosshart.
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Her voice simply doesn't have the heft to project the necessary menace. Despite these occasional missteps, though, Horehound establishes the Dead Weather as a fully-realized band with a sufficiently distinctive point of view that deserves serious consideration as more than just a one-off side project.
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All-star collective make unholy hot-and-sweaty psycho-blues racket.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 47 out of 52
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Mixed: 2 out of 52
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Negative: 3 out of 52
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drewpJul 30, 2009
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Nov 22, 2011
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Jan 8, 2011