The Dead Weather

Horehound Third Man/Sony BMG **

There’s something decidedly whiffy and banal about Jack White’s latest outing. While The Dead Weather might be a hard slog away from the quite thrilling The Raconteurs, the band this four-piece reference the most is White Stripes, except the reference points are just that and no more – The Dead Weather add next to nothing to the mix. As a listener (and, in my case, a staunch White Stripes fan) you’d have to ask why White wanted to try his experienced hand at something so banal as dense retreads of 1960s garage/ blues-rock nuggets. True, you can understand why the others (The Kills’ Alison Mosshart, Queens of the Stone Age’s Dean Fertita, and The Raconteurs’ Jack Lawrence) are along for the ride. White is either too vain to appreciate the fallacy of such an exercise, or too wrapped up in his own profligacy to calm down and realise that sometimes less is more.

Download track:Bone House