Plumbiferous Media

Jack White’s newest album, Sea of Cow­ards, is his sec­ond with side project The Dead Weather, released just under a year after the group’s debut, Hore­hound. The band’s sopho­more album uses the same mem­bers, lead­ing to the same sort of musi­cal makeup as was demon­strated in Hore­hound, but with a def­i­nite pro­gres­sion from that album which itself, espe­cially given the expe­ri­ence of every­one involved, was ulti­mately dis­ap­point­ing. Sea of Cow­ards isn’t per­fect; how­ever, it’s sig­nif­i­cantly bet­ter than Hore­hound, and it does a much bet­ter job at demon­strat­ing the skill of White’s Dead Weather.

Tak­ing a cue per­haps from noise music, Sea of Cow­ards is defined by strangely struc­tured cacoph­ony. Drums, voice, elec­tric gui­tar, and synth, all excel­lent on their own, seem to be try­ing to forge their own paths, yet in one way or another, every­thing links together, thus some­how still cre­at­ing a pow­er­ful, cap­ti­vat­ing track. While the whole while main­tain­ing a dense array of some­how not-quite-conflicting sounds, Sea of Cow­ards ranges between being sur­pris­ingly con­trolled and com­pletely out of con­trol, some­times in a sin­gle track (such as the fit­tingly titled “I’m Mad”).

On Sea of Cow­ards, Ali­son Mosshart is once again respon­si­ble for lead vocals, while White takes a back­ing posi­tion - but one that is at least some­what less in the back­ground than it was on Hore­hound. White’s rough coun­try tones are given the chance to rip into the music when they take the fore­ground, while Mosshart’s almost equally strong voice pro­vides the rest. Unlike Hore­hound, Sea of Cow­ards places each vocal­ist in the best place for their own sound. When every­thing goes per­fectly, the two vocal­ists swoop about each other, tak­ing con­certed jabs at the sound that pro­vides Sea of Cow­ards with its energy - and even when it doesn’t, it still works very well.

As usual for White’s work, Sea of Cow­ards is rel­a­tively sim­ple lyri­cally, but, as the lyrics aren’t really the focus of the music, that’s gen­er­ally for­giv­able. Sim­plic­ity aside, on Sea of Cow­ards as much as Hore­hound, The Dead Weather tends to come up with the occa­sional gen­uinely inter­est­ing line or stanza - usu­ally made even bet­ter by their com­bi­na­tion with the music. One of Sea of Cow­ards’ best exam­ples is the open­ing of “Hus­tle and Cuss,” where Mosshart sings “Knock on the door / And the door knocks back / The joke never go no fur­ther than that / Fire goes back inside the match / Back down the stack,” in just the kind of vibrantly odd depic­tion that makes Sea of Cow­ards so vivid.

The best aspect of Sea of Cow­ards is how amaz­ingly well every­thing man­ages to fit together, despite enor­mous odds. That said, the effort put into each track does seem to dwin­dle as the album pro­gresses. While much of Sea of Cow­ards is clearly thought out, and ter­rif­i­cally imple­mented, later tracks are sim­ply not as cre­ative, and even some­what for­get­table. Still, there is sig­nif­i­cantly more good than bad on the album.

Sea of Cow­ards is a some­what strange album, and it def­i­nitely takes a cer­tain mind­set or open­ness of mind to com­pletely appre­ci­ate, but it is worth it. The Dead Weather has def­i­nitely started tak­ing advan­tage of its excel­lent makeup, and the odd inter­ac­tions between the always excel­lent instru­ments and vocals alike, all try­ing to push and shove and make out on top, yet always end­ing up work­ing together, result in some extremely inter­est­ing and unique music. Sea of Cow­ards is not per­fect, but The Dead Weather should def­i­nitely con­tinue to work out what is still missing.

This post is tagged 70-79, The Dead Weather