Dead Weather, The - Horehound [2LP] (180 Gram, D-side etching, gatefold)

The Dead Weather's full length debut LP Horehound: a double-album dose of black magic riffs, fuzzed-out guitorgan, and painful peons to the devil-knows-what, comes as a double-LP with a Rob Jones art etching on side 4 and is lovingly housed in a thick-as-thieves gatefold sleeve. It's a jaw-dropping record with the packaging to match.

Born as a one-off collaboration between friends and tour mates, The Dead Weather has since evolved into one of the most vital and provocative bands in contemporary rock 'n' roll. Together Jack White, Alison Mosshart, Dean Fertita, and Jack Lawrence have created a dark magic all their own, a heavy brew of melding heavy riffs, thick beats, and blues snarl with raw soul power and unrelenting sexual energy.

The Dead Weather first united after Alison Mosshart's band The Kills supported Jack White and Jack Lawrence's band The Raconteurs on a string of North American dates. The trio followed the tour with a few informal recording sessions at White's famed Third Man studio, soon augmented by Raconteurs collaborator/Queens of the Stone Age multi-instrumentalist Dean Fertita. The result proved extraordinary – The Dead Weather's debut album, Horehound, arrived in July 2009 to worldwide critical acclaim and a top 10 Billboard 200 chart debut.

Despite all the star power in this project, Mosshart's vocals are the main attraction: she snarls, croons, and sighs, displaying all the charisma she has in the Kills plus more nuance. She takes her voice to places she hasn't explored with her main project: 'So Far from Your Weapon,' which she wrote on her own, boasts an hypnotic groove and an oddly jazzy undercurrent, thanks to her smoky singing and White's rolling drums. Indeed, her voice and White's are usually the loudest elements on the album, with Fertita and Lawrence ably filling in the gaps between the pair's towering presences.