In my First Listen review of this record I called the songwriting “unremarkable,” and in a way, I was right. But now after 10 listens I realize that in a much bigger way, I totally missed the point. Unlike Jack White’s other bands, The Dead Weather isn’t necessarily about making melody-driven rock songs- they’re about riffs, grooves, and atmosphere. On their second album, it’s apparent that the band is not only getting better at what they do, they sound like they’re having a lot more fun doing it, too.
The air oozes humidity and buzzes with static electricity. Jack Lawrence’s tense but fluid basslines creep up behind you like shady private detectives. White and Dean Ferita’s cobra-blues guitar licks fill in the cracks between their respective other bands (a little less pyrotechnic than The White Stripes, not quite as metal as Queens Of The Stone Age). White’s drums tie the strings together with simple, strutting beats, and Ferita’s synths bubble up like neon potions in a mad scientist’s test tube rack. The vocals by White and Alison Mosshart may not add much melody, but they do add plenty of rhythmic punch and raw bad-assery. Mosshart’s sultry hollers sound like come-ons cloaked in threats (”Let’s go where no one can see us/ and find the difference between us/ you can cry like a baby/ just let me do what I need to.”) When White’s in the spotlight, he likes to spit his brand of wry, rap-like braggadocio (”All the white girls trip when I/ sing at Sunday service”). Every few minutes the atmosphere reaches a breaking point: the sky explodes into thunder, lightning, and torrential rain for a brief spell before it all drifts away just as quickly. Then The Dead Weather keep on trudgin’ along the muddy road, soaked to their socks, until the next storm crashes over them.
That’s not to say Sea Of Cowards is an overly repetitive record, as most of the tracks have distinct vibes. The sleek UFO tractor beams of “The Difference Between Us” enhance the allure of Mosshart’s bipolar coquette. The slithering leviathan chorus of “Die By The Drop” and the skittery spider-walk verse of “Gasoline” add layers of delicious dread. And the bluntly-titled “I’m Mad” offers so many great moments that it feels much longer than its 3:13 running time (in a good way).
Not too surprisingly, most of the Jack White-fronted tracks tend to feel like little more than methadone for those of us eagerly awaiting our next White Stripes fix. Opener “Blue Blood Blues” is the most Stripes-like number here- more specifically, it kind of resembles “Icky Thump” with its herky-jerky stomp and off-the-top-of-the-head-sounding nonsense lyrics (”Crack a window, crack a broken bone/ crack your knuckles when you’re at home”). Yet with the addition of some ghostly backing vocals, the track at least makes an effort to fit The Dead Weather’s style. “Looking At The Invisible Man” tries a similar trick by taking what sounds like a White Stripes B-side and slathering it in radioactive bullfrog guitars and moon-elf vocal filters, only it doesn’t work quite as well this time. Then there’s “Old Mary,” an artsy indulgence of White’s mutant Catholicism (”Old Mary, full of grease, your heart stops within you…scary are the fruits of your tomb and harsh are the terms of your sentence”). It’s not a track I’d listen to out of context, but I love it as a haunting coda to the album as a whole.
In fact, despite what my First Listen-self said about the unremarkable songwriting and lack of “hits” on Sea Of Cowards, “Old Mary” and “Invisible Man” are the only two tracks I wouldn’t put in rotation if I still had a college radio show. I’m still not sure if the rest of the record is, as I originally hoped it would be, “more than an intoxicating mix of blues, fury and sweaty monster sex.” Then again, how much more should I really demand from such visceral rock n’ roll? What matters most, I think, is that with each spin I take through Sea Of Cowards, the deeper it sinks into my blood.
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