Horehound, by the Dead Weather. A review

From the desk of Ned P. Rauch:

It starts out with a drum roll and an electric guitar's hum. From there, The Dead Weather's first record, Horehound, goes back-alley creeping. The release date is about a week away, but the band is streaming it for free today. There's something a little menacing and belligerent about these songs—qualities you don't want in a neighbor but that aren't necessarily bad in a rock band. The lyrics, delivered for the most part by Alison Mosshart, are often chanted. She snaps out a sort of cat-growl thing in the opening track, "60 Feet Tall," right before guitarist Dean Fertita bursts in with a solo that tumbles upward with a tone pulled right out of "You Shook Me," from Zeppelin's first record. Of course, that could also be Jack White. He's officially the drummer of this band, but he mans a guitar, too.

"Cut Like a Buffalo" saunters in a slow, dub stampede, and hit me, on first listen, as the album's best song, though that may have just been the title talking. "There's a bullet in my pocket and it's buring a hole, you're so far from your weapon and you want to go home," Mosshart teases in "So Far from Your Weapon." After that, "Treat Me Like Your Mother" opens like Rush's "Tom Sawyer" (really, it's true) and wraps up with the lines, "You blink when you breathe and you breathe when you lie."

The whole world's covered Bob Dylan's songs, but I doubt anyone's pummeled one the way Dead Weather does Dylan's "New Pony." That song doesn't have a chance once these guys catch sight of it. On the record's last song, "Will There Be Enough Water," which includes a West African-ish acoustic guitar line and crickets chirping in the background, Mosshart and White ask, "Will there be enough water when my ship comes in?" a question that reveals both arrogance and insecurity, clever trick. They end with a defiant taunt: "Just because you caught me, does not make it a sin."

Tempos lurch, the bass rumbles, guitars buzz and, in "Rocking Horse," twang in perfect warped surf music tradition, and voices cut, shriek and distort, but it's the drums kicking over all the trash cans. Thank White, the reason this band exists, for that. He's on drums here, and he pounds the bejesus out of the things. It's not just muscle, though. He's got touch, too. If you didn't know he was a guitar player in all his other bands, you'd think he was a hell of a drummer.

And what's a horehound, you ask? It's a medicinal plant of the mint family that was thought to cure the bite of a mad dog. This record sounds more like the mad dog than the cure to its bite.