The Dead Weather are one of the finer and wierder of the ever increasing Jack White offshoot projects. A mix match of indie darlings featuring guitarist Dean Fertita of Queens of the Stone Age and the groin tingle inducing attractiveness of Alison Mosshart from The Kills. Last year’s debut album Horehound offered a dense, atmospheric slice of dark garage rock, it's just one year later and they've returned with Sea of Cowards.
The album starts off promisingly enough with a punchy deep bluesy riff and Jack White wailing in the background. The whole album is grunty, heavy, dirty garage sludge! The track I'm Mad offers an insanity ear cavity infection with a psychedelic earwax and blood filling. Jack White and Alison Hoffman seem to react and feed off each other in an sexually gratifying unholy union. There's an array of different genres available, you can tell the band are playing songs that they enjoy such as the bluesy Blue Blood Blues, I Can't Hear You, or the psychedelic I'm Mad and Old Mary.
The band is sounding exactly like that - a band. There is a lesson that the failed Audioslave or most other 'superbands' can learn from in forging an original sound together instead of four personalities trying to hog the spotlight.
Play loud and get freaky with reckless, nude body painting abandon and spare no thought for your neighbours.
5/5

Highlights: The Difference Between Us, I'm Mad, Jawbreaker