The Dead Weather
– Horehound
You could call Horehound a side project, but it stomps and spits like a main act that’s just slipped the leash. Alison Mosshart doesn’t front this band—she lunges through it like she’s trying to outrun her own feedback. Jack White takes a backseat on vocals but steers the thing with drums like he’s scoring a fight scene. Dean Fertita’s guitar snarls. Jack Lawrence’s bass burrows. It’s a band that sounds like it was thrown together in a garage and left there to ferment into something dangerous.
Best of…
This isn’t music for polite rooms or polished playlists. It drips sweat. It sways like it’s about to pass out, then lands the punch anyway. The production is dense, but not suffocating—more like you’re caught inside a velvet thunderstorm. There’s blues here, but it’s filtered through a busted amp and a handful of pills. It’s raw, mean, and strangely addictive. Mosshart’s voice slides between croon and curse like she’s got ghosts to exercise and no interest in therapy.
What makes Horehound stick isn’t innovation—it’s commitment. Everyone involved is playing like the tape might catch fire at any second, and they’re hoping it does. It’s less an album than a séance for every filthy riff and haunted moan too weird for the radio but too good to bury.
Choice Tracks
Treat Me Like Your Mother
This is the album’s snarling center. Mosshart and White trade vocals like knives across the table—spiteful, seductive, and spitting venom. The riff walks a straight line, but the vocals zigzag all over it. It sounds like a threat, or maybe foreplay.
Hang You from the Heavens
Opener as declaration. Mosshart spits the chorus like she’s already halfway through breaking up with someone who didn’t know they were dating. The fuzz guitar is swamp-thick, the beat simple and savage. A song that burns the invitation and shows up anyway.
I Cut Like a Buffalo
This is White doing something slippery and weird. Dub bass. Creeping organ. Lyrics that feel like a dare. It’s playful and menacing at once, like a smile with teeth missing. Doesn’t move like rock, doesn’t care. It lurches, and that’s the point.
60 Feet Tall
Slow burn turned wildfire. The track crawls in like it’s casing the joint. Then the guitars explode, and Mosshart sounds possessed. You can hear the band taking their time, then suddenly deciding to blow the walls out. It’s tension snapped in half.
Bone House
Sinister and slinky. The guitar riff slithers more than it struts, and Mosshart coos like she’s reading an autopsy report. It’s one of the most atmospheric cuts on the album—less aggressive, more poisonous. You don’t hear this one, you inhale it.
Horehound is not pretty, and that’s the point. The riffs grind, the rhythms lurch, and the whole thing feels like it’s crawling out of a humid Southern basement with a knife between its teeth.