Album Review: The Dead Weather - Sea Of Cowards

Prior to the official release of The Dead Weather’s second album Sea of Cowards the band decided to continuously stream the album on their website for 24 hours. This got me thinking, if you were to take a random selection of normal, well-toward, working folk, chain them up in a room and subject them to 24 hours of audio onslaught from Jack White and his alt-rock co-horts, what kind of twisted, haggard beasts would emerge? And just as every online White-aholic in the world decides to stop reading, I assure you, I ask this in a totally positive way.

The Dead Weathers first release Horehound was a prime slice of bullet riddled, alt-rock pie; violent as it was sexy (courtesy of Alison Mosshart), intelligent as it was ballsy (courtesy of Jack White) - so how does Sea of Cowards differ from this thundering debut? The answer to this, I believe, lies in the record’s first cut.

‘Blue Blood Blues’ opens with a thick, filthy bassline that reeks of Queens of the Stone Age and The Kills (guitarist Dean Fertita and vocalist Alison Mosshart’s ‘other’ bands), yet it is still heart wrenchingly bluesy. The song continues in the same vein (‘Blue Blood Blues’…vein….. bu dum dum); as it takes the blues, covers it in leather and studs, arms it with a machine gun and tells it to go and sort out that bitch who’s been breaking your heart once and for all.

It is this aroma of aged legends and fallen heroes present in each song that makes this album different to, but not necessarily better than, Horehound. ‘Hussle and Cuss’ harks back to Led Zeppelin-esque blues jams but gets a slap of modernity from Mosshart’s vocal moans, while ‘The Difference Between Us’ sees Dean Fertita crack out the vintage synth for what can only be described as a would-be stoner-rock anthem.

‘I’m Mad’ sees Mosshart utter the aforementioned title repeatedly for three minutes before first single ‘Die By The Drop’ grinds into motion – both songs are dark, seem to borrow more from prog-rock than the blues and make for an uncomfortable and less enjoyable listen. ‘Gasoline’, ‘Looking at the Invisible Man’ and ‘Old Mary’ also fall at this hurdle as the album begins to loose its initial swagger. It is this indulgence that causes so many supergroups to flunk at the album stage – what sounds good in the jam room, does not necessarily sound good on the iPod.

‘No Horse’ and ‘Jawbreaker’ begin to pick up the pace of the album again with snappy delivery and massive riffs, but all in all Sea of Cowards seems to float away into a tie-dye ocean of prog-rock tedium – an impressive feat considering none of the songs top four minutes!

So back to my initial question; if you subjected a group of normal people to 24 hours of Dead Weather they would undoubtedly emerge with long black hair, black leather for skin, riding a Harley Davidson with a hooker perched on the back. However maybe, just maybe, one of them might come out wearing an Iron Butterfly T-shirt - and is that really a price worth paying for this musical experiment? You decide.