MUSIC REVIEW: THE DEAD WEATHER - 'HOREHOUND'
Proof Positive That Rock and Roll Can Be A Most Lethal Weapon.
(Third Man/Warner Bros. Records) 
It's about 115 degrees down here in Texas. The sun beats down like Satan's fiery fist from 6:00 a.m. 'til 10:00 p.m., and there's no way in hell to get away from it. Your skin melts in this kind of heat. You bleed. And from somewhere amidst the sulphur and the gnashing of teeth, I found this new Dead Weather Horehound album this week. There's no sun shining on this album, no sir -- no sun at all.
Horehound is a dark commentary on the seeping, dark shadow cast by every sin committed and denied by the very heart of the American Dream -- the hypocritical violence and vengeance of middle America, as it were. Guns. Metaphorical or literal. We all got 'em. And we're always on the prowl, cocked and loaded, looking around every corner for the next innocent, unsuspecting sucker who's gonna catch the losing end of our pulled trigger. You don't believe me? Of course you don't.
What The Dead Weather have done with Horehound is add a soundtrack to the bloodlust behind every attempt to gloss over our own inability to satiate our insatiable self-interests with petty public postures of philanthropic charities. (Well now...this is certainly not promising. Not this review, not so far. A bit too pessimistic, is it?) But this is what's on the mind as I slowly roll through the suburban borders of the Austin metroplex with "60 Feet Tall" keeping the pace on the car radio, windows down, sweating. The opening of Horehound kicks like the missing backtrack for "John the Revelator," but this is no bluesman baptized in the Mississippi crooning about some hallucinogenic prisoner in Patmos some 1,900 years ago. No sir, no ma'am. This is a woman. A woman telling you, me, God and the devil how she is and how she's gonna be with no mind what to what we might have to think or say about it. "I can take the trouble/'cos I'm 60 feet tall". There's no reason to doubt that there'll be trouble.
Horehound begins disjointed, aggressive, even off-putting at times. What do you do when a woman tells you "I like to grab you by the hair/And hang you from the heavens" one moment and then screams "I want to grab you by the hair/And drag you down to the devil" the next? Hell if I know. But herein lies the appeal of The Dead Weather: Allison Mosshart. Mosshart has put an edge to Jack White's Rock and Roll repertoire that was otherwise lacking in The Raconteurs and only partly available in Meg White's drum contributions to The White Stripes. Hell hath no fury, or so they say, and Horehound is set to a caliber of wrath only accessible to the female variety of our species (as far as I know). And, honestly, it rocks! Rocks like a stiletto heel being kicked through your right ear and pushed out your left, with a rhythm which means that it doesn't always necessarily feel or sound too pleasant.
Take the rather jarring line from "Treat Me Like Your Mother" (if the title's not disturbing enough) -- "Stand up like a man/You better learn to shake hands/And treat me like your mother" -- for example. Granted, at face value, this little demand could seem harmless -- a blink and a nod to proper etiquette of respect between a man and a woman. But, in real-time conversation, this dialogue takes another kind of scaly skin altogether. You're (the man) standing there in the kitchen, toeing cheap linoleum with your loafers, hands pulling lint from the lining of your slack pockets, and the love of your life (or what you once considered the love of your life) runs this line across your face in the middle of one of the many verbal shootouts that have all but whittled your marital bliss into a cascading spiral of bitterness, regret, and selfish deceit. She's got a wooden spoon in her hand and you're standing there with nothing but old receipts and razor burn all over your neck. 
"C'mon look me in the eye/You want to try to tell a lie?/You can't/You know why?/I'm just like your mother"! (The exclamation there is my own.) One minute you're thinking you're off to work for another day, when all of a sudden she puts an 8mm cartridge between your eyebrows (see: "Treat Me Like Your Mother" short film on The Dead Weather's website). Ah...but the scenario has played itself out and continues to play itself out in every moment of every day in every one-acre, brick-with-white-trim, two-car-garage suburban home across the country. Far be it to say, Allison Mosshart might have unknowingly (or knowingly) written the war-cry of every caged housewife in the western hemisphere. Shame of it all is none of them are probably gonna hear it. (God knows they need to.)
Horehound is loaded with raw woman-blues (I'd argue the most authentic blues of it all), and Mosshart's carnal moans and primal howls stir up a demon in the whole Rock and Roll psyche we haven't heard in a good long while -- the musical equivalent to finding a box of automatic weapons hidden under a pile of nightgowns, bra straps, and wadded stockings in the back of your mom's side of your parent's closet. ("What the...? Where are you going with this?") Certainly I'm not neglecting to take note of the musical contributions of Fertita, Lawrence, and White in The Dead Weather. But, given a setting where the question were asked honestly (aside from all the obvious pull and profit of White's presence on the record), all three of these gentlemen would confess that this record lives and dies on the person and gravitas of their frontwoman. Take the blind idealism and romantic notions of the '60s away from Big Brother and the Holding Company, and this is what Janis Joplin would have wanted you to hear. "I drank some dirty water/Shook evil hands/I've done some bad things/And they're easier to do." It's Mosshart's ax-to-grind that puts teeth on The Dead Weather's bite.
The writing credits don't fall completely on the shoulders of Mosshart, however. Perhaps the most unnerving and adventurous track, "I Cut Like A Buffalo," is penned by White himself to a stomping, heavily distorted reggae rhythm. "I may look like a woman/But I cut like a buffalo" -- the lyrics are controversial at best. Amid all the "pricks" and "pins" and talk of slitting throats, you hear the persistent sound of blood curdling in the back of a victim's throat -- "Is that you choking?" the singer asks, "Or are you just joking?" "Someone's getting killed in this whole thing," you admit, and the worst part of it all is you're not completely sure that it's not you whose throat's getting slit by the end. [Open note to The Dead Weather from Ramus Dahl: Please call Scratch Perry for some guest appearances on this one, at least for a few gigs on the tour (preferably the ACL show.)] My! My! This is all too much for me to say at this point.
You'll have to decide for yourself how and what you feel when you listen to Horehound. "Will There Be Enough Water?" is the most gentle track you'll get on this one -- an acoustic (provided by White) blues number that closes the album with the same ominous, violent uncertainty and confusion with which it began. Other standouts include "Bone House," "New Pony," and the rifling homicide of "So Far From Your Weapon." But the album is good for those who have the ears to hear "it" and who "get" what The Dead Weather is "giving out." Not everyone will like Horehound, by any means. Not everyone can stomach the idea of an angry woman with a gun in her hand. The very fine line that all progressive art tries to balance itself on is detailing harsh and morbid ideas in nonviolent but equally potent mediums. In this case, music...more particularly, Rock and Roll. And Rock and Roll is a most lethal weapon.
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