Dead Weather Album

We’ve got a real barnburner here!

The Dead Weather debut, Horehound, is hitting the shelves of your local music vendor, or (I suppose, in this day in age) your own personal web browser/download/filesharing/iTunes Store (or wherever the kids are getting their music from these days) on July 14th 2009.

I don’t care where you get it from — just get it!!!

The newest outfit in Jack White’s Great Rock and Roll Wardrobe is a black dress with torn fishnet tights, cigarette burns, and whiskey stains.  This comment is no hint at any recent cross-dressing or fashion designing on the part of the White Stripes frontman but rather a nod in acknowledgment to the vocal prowess and unyielding gravitas of Alison Mossmart, who puts a wicked, enticing hex on all these tracks.

If you happened to miss the audio preview broadcast this past Wednesday on iLike, you can have a listen to and view four singles (“Treat Me Like Your Mother,” “I Cut Like A Buffalo,” “Hang You From The Heavens,” and “Will There Be Enough Water?”) from the album on the band’s official website: thedeadweather.com.

If you want more…

In anticipation of Horehound‘s release next week, Jonathan Glazer [the director of Sexy Beast (2000) and a library of music videos for acts such as Radiohead, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds and Massive Attack, among others] will be premiering his short film entitled Treat Me Like Your Mother, featuring none other than Jack White (I assume) and the lovely Alison Mossmart on Cinemax this Saturday night, July 11th, at 9:55 p.m. Allegedly, the film is based on The Dead Weather song of the same name, and the two trailers (check them out on YouTube) show both Jack White and Alison Mossmart (respectively) tromping across what appears to be some nameless field behind some sort of subdevelopment south of Anywhere, USA — both of them clad in some badass black leather, cocking and loading some ungodly awesome handheld automatic weapons of some sort and making a long-stepping b-line to probably go and drill a pound of lead into each other’s foreheads.  In theory, this little plotline my fancy’s coming up with seems real sweet, but Glazer’s only clue: a caption that reads “AND THEY SAY ROMANCE IS DEAD” is the only convincing tease we get.

Your guess is as good as mine ’til we see the film.

All that considered, and not that I necessarily support the following notions (only half-heartedly, perhaps), this Dead Weather album is a real violent collection of tunes.  Aggressive.  Dark.  Edgy (I guess — if “edgy” means anything anymore).  There’s an excitement here I haven’t seen in a Jack White project since the De Stijl days.  The songs give you that same forbidden sense of danger — that “holy shit!” feeling you got when your adolescent fingers first touched the cold, dead, steal rigor mortis of a standard issue Glock 19.  This new stuff is certainly a turn away from the peppermint red and white lonely consoling of White’s previous ventures.  It seems that Mr. White has set down the ol’ guitar and commandeered the assistance of a few beloveds to dig up and come to terms with some of his old ghosts — in this case, the drums.

Horehound hits the ears and mind like an incantation of the acid blues psychedelia.

I’m gonna give this thing a few more listens on the headphones in the dark before I go to bed with the hopes that this little ritual will conjure up a full-length review.

In the meantime, save your money for July 14th and set your Tivos for Cinemax, 9:55 p.m. on July 11th.