The Dead Weather delivers vicious, gut-wrenching rock in Dodge and Burn [Review]
Five years is a long time - especially when you're Jack White and have a dozen projects on the go.
After half a decade's wait since 2010's Sea of Cowards, it came as a surprise to many that the White Stripes rocker had time for his bluesy, moody supergroup The Dead Weather at all.
Lyrically and musically, Dodge and Burn closes in on the spirit of White's second solo release, Lazaretto, with ghoulish melodrama and power tool guitars. The coffin-raider look is still key, but it's pulled off with a greater sense of fun, and a visceral guitars-drums-vocals union that leaves no space to breathe.
Opener I Feel Love (Every Million Miles) is a twisted tornado of Led Zeppelin riffs; singer Alison Mosshart's banshee voice sounding as tarnished as ever. Dean Fertita's garage chords and screechy solo sparkles amid Jack Lawrence's pulsing, atmospheric, corroded bass. It's hard to argue that Jack's musical separation from Meg White hasn't yielded some fascinating collaborations.
But let's hope his famed love of threes doesn't limit this project to just a trio of albums.