Heart of a Punk Soul of a Rasta

THE DEAD WEATHER - SEA OF COWARDS

Only 2 proper gigs from DW in the UK. And one on the same night as Blondie. This meant it was no go for me to see DEAD WEATHER in June. Where these 2 undercover gigs the only 2 chances of see Dead Weather's second coming "Sea of Cowards" played live? If that is the case I better just get on with reviewing "Sea of Cowards" anyway.

On the face of it "Sea of Cowards" is a sound album, it ain't broke and it don't need fixing. But it ain't monumental either. And monumental it should have been. And there's another problem with Dead Weather, but I'll come to that later. You see "Sea of Cowards" should have opened with "Mary", which is the most abstracted track on the album, and also the last track. If the "Sea of Cowards" had opened with "Mary" and used it to set its tone & map its course, then "Sea of Cowards" wouldn't have turned out to be "Horehound II", "Son of Horehound", "Horehound Revisited", "Horehound, The Bitch is Back". You see "Mary" aside all the songs on "Sea of Cowards" step directly in the footfalls of the songs on "Horehound".

I got the feeling listening to "Sea of Cowards" that one day very soon I'll be seeing it packaged up together with "Horehound" in some kind of gatefold box set thingy (B sides included). But hey what do I know. Perhaps I won't.

Now for the other problem with Dead Weather, it's a size thing. When I went to see them for the first time at The Forum Kentish Town it didn't really hit me. But months later at the Academy in Brum the problem was there alright. The magnitude of the opener "60 feet tall", Mossehart's performance and the DW sound, burnt so blindingly brilliant - almost magnesium white in intensity - that everything else that followed seemed seriously underwhelming. Yes it's a nice problem to have, but it's also a curse. On "Sea of Cowards" the problem is there again. "Blue Blood Blues" and "No Horse" are so ballistic it makes the rest of the material seem rather ordinaire. And ordinaire is not what "Sea of Cowards" is. "Sea of Cowards" is simply as I've already said "Horehound II", "Son of Horehound", "Horehound Revisited", "Horehound, The Bitch Bag is Back", and that in itself is pretty damn good.

When's Horehound III out then?