HeiBräu

Being that The Dead Weather is something of an indie supergroup — Jack White (The White Stripes, The Raconteurs), Alison Mossheart (The Kills), Dean Fertita (Queens of the Stone Age), and Jack Lawrence (The Greenhornes, The Raconteurs) — it was naturally a beacon for the press and a hotly anticipated debut. In one regard, the attention will have been worth it; The Dead Weather sound very much like they’d be a tremendous live act. Granted, an album’s song content doesn’t usually change much when it hits the stage (excepting perhaps The Fiery Furnaces), but where it misfires, it can be compensated for with gusto.

Horehound, however, for all its swampy atmosphere and thunderous blues riffage, is actually a bit boring. Where it’s good, it tends to be downright noteworthy, and where it meanders, it gets old fast. There seems to be a chronic lack of spark, as if the group sat back and expected the magic to work itself. Jack White is one of the hardest-working men in the indie rock world, but lifeless tracks like “Rocking Horse” and “3 Birds” make him sound as if he’s relying on nothing more than a vocal track doused with reverb and a net of all-star talent to carry him past unmemorable riffs and melodies. The Raconteurs have very much been a successful outing, as well as The Kills, with their gritty minimalism, and obviously The White Stripes, too, with their reinvented brand of rock and roll; the makings are all there, but the execution falters in some pretty noticeable ways.

“Hang You Up From The Heavens” and “Will There Be Enough Water?” are obvious highlights, but three tracks in, Horehound gives way to “I Cut Like a Buffalo,” its bizarre lyrics a foggy, thoughtless blight: “you know I look like a woman but / I cut like a buffalo.” Vocalist Alison Mossheart has dirty swagger aplenty on most tracks here, so it isn’t for lack of effort on her part, it just seems like the songwriting hadn’t solidified before they committed the songs to tape. “Who’s got it figured out? / left-right left-right got it figured out,” Jack White intones on “Treat Me Like Your Mother,” one of several underdeveloped tracks that didn’t quite make it out of jam territory. Overall, the arrangements aren’t fleshed out enough to warrant anything more than an EP; the band, songs, and album all formulated in under three weeks, and in far more places that one would have hoped, it shows. Not so much a swing and a miss, just a disappointing, watery misuse of copious amounts of evident talent.

The Dead Weather’s “Hang You Up From The Heavens,” from Horehound.

- JB