What followed was a rather hilarious exchange between Colbert and the Dead Weather/Raconteurs man & former White Stripes frontman White, wherein the musically deluded host tried to convince Jack of his greatness with a lightning round karaoke jam of pretty much every Bob Seger song every written. He also asks the nine-time Grammy winner “What’s your price for your integrity?” and turns Seven Nation Army into a yogurt jingle, in a musical Twilight Zone moment too weird not to be seen for yourself.

There are apparently two parts to go in the series chronicling Colbert’s attempts to get his musical career jumpstarted, with White’s assistance. “Tune in tomorrow as I close the deal and land my record contract,” Stephen concludes.

Big thanks to The Audio Perv for the hookup!

We’ll undoubtedly catch fire for our number one selection, and truth be told it’s a bit of a surprise even to us. But the goods speak louder than hype, and that’s what matters long after the trolls have gone to sleep. So as long as the Gorillaz don’t blow everyone’s minds with a free album on Christmas morning that shakes up the list, we’re good to go.

If you don’t know a name on this list it’s time to start digging (the links provided with each selection will help), because there’s not an album on here that hasn’t earned its share of repeated full-volume listens at dangerously high speeds through some mountain range or seaside cliffs over the past year, with yours truly wide-eyed and white-knuckled behind the wheel. 2010’s been one hell of a great musical ride – here’s 20 reasons why.

1. Kanye West
My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

Kanye West returns to the full-length two years after the release of the cold-beat pity party 808s & Heartbreak, and there’s a maniacally inspired ambition to My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (formerly Good Ass Job) that immediately sets it apart from not only the entirety of his previous catalogue but the current climate of Hip-Hop as a whole. Every boast we’ve heard, every ridiculous claim we’ve seen is rendered somehow, some way, justified, if only for the duration of the album’s 68 minutes.

A rampantly evolving talent, ambitious orchestral production, unabashed grandiosity and full-throttle confidence has just upstaged & ante-upped the entire rap scene in one fell swoop. Check mate.

No album better captures the Zeitgeist of 2010. That makes it bigger even than Kanye West thinks he is. Ultimately, he’s served the highest purpose of an artist, and that is to be a conduit for all of which a society is unable to, or unwilling to articulate. MBDTF will forever be a time machine back to 2010, the year of the douchebag.

Kanye’s Good Ass Job

2. Black Keys
Brothers

Recorded at the legendary Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Alabama, Brothers is a riff-roaring cumulation of the Keys’ strongest blues grit, with a return to the production gloss they warmed to for 2008’s Attack & Release. A linear path of development and exploration is evident in even the most casual stroll through the band’s catalog, but never has the Akron blues duo pooled their stylistic strengths and transcended their own standard more than on this latest release.

There’s a reason Brothers sounds like a hard-fought leap of progress for the pair, who each explored solo albums between releases; Carney said as much in a recent interview with Billboard: “Dan and I grew up a lot as individuals and musicians prior to making this album. Our relationship was tested in many ways but at the end of the day, we’re brothers; I think these songs reflect that.”

Despite running fifteen tracks, Brothers never suffers a lull, and the castaways are minimal on an album that explores many different threads in the blues tapestry. The open spaces are vital, as overbuilding any of the songs would amount to covering their core, simple beauty. In more than one way, this is the Black Keys’ Goldilocks album, where all the variables seem to have come together just right, no element is too high or low in the mix. The result is a glowing success.

The Black Keys In Top Form On Brothers

3. Eminem
Recovery

Recovery is without question the strongest, most potent & versatile offering Eminem has delivered yet, possessing the most devastating and detailed lyrical narratives this side of Fear Of A Black Planet. It certainly doesn’t have Planet’s revolutionary soul, but what it lacks in a greater movement it compensates for in the most clever, obliterating character annihilations and hilarious, rewind-demanding multilayered entendres the game’s ever seen.

From the perspective of a 24-hour music junkie, a fanatic for evolution of form and transcendental devotion to the craft, this album reaches new heights of lyrical prowess and delivery. Marshall Mathers has a new lease on the mad scientist lyrical-savant funhouse he calls a life, and he’s earned every bit of praise he’s bound to receive for this one.

Eminem’s Undeniable Recovery

4. Gorillaz
Plastic Beach

Ambitious, avant-garde and about as complex in flavor as a mouthful of Jelly Bellys, the album isn’t nearly as pop friendly as the first two Gorillaz releases; there’s little to no sign of the 19-2000s or Feel Good, Incs of yesteryear. There are strange new peaks, however, that simply dismiss outright commercial appeal ambition

Addictive beats, otherworldly effects and the occasional super-gravitational black hole of a hook ensure that Plastic Beach will be held in high regard. The 80s love-pop throwback instrumentation of On Melancholy Hill is heart-brimmingly adorable and as catchy as any ditty Air’s come up with, as Albarn’s Vicodin tenor softly washes through in passive fashion.

There’s kneejerk fault to be found in the missed opportunity for a smash hit, but ultimately it’s missing the point entirely. Plastic Beach is a snapshot of a wildly colorful jungle of influence & inspiration, a futuristic clusterfuck that takes repeated listens to settle in – but once the clouds of alien adaptation break, a strange new sun shines through, and the Gorillaz soar to entirely new heights.

Strange Waves On Plastic Beach

5. Deftones
Diamond Eyes

Diamond Eyes is a brilliant and fiercely colorful collection of tracks that finds the Deftones reaching a new stage of evolution, delivering the most progressive, dynamic work of their careers.

Refusing to hide behind the touchstone familiarity of their previous albums, these Sacramento rockers have obliterated any notion that they’ve been irreparably weakened by bassist Chi Cheng’s departure. He’s undoubtedly strong in their hearts and thoughts, but rather than dwell on the pain the band has risen to remarkable new heights with an album that surges into the light and establishes promising new horizons.

Diamond Eyes Is Everything We Didn’t Dare Hope It Would Be

6. Alain Johannes
Spark

Spark explores an even-heeled balance between tribute, mourning and send-off romanticism that speaks volumes of not only Alain’s songwriting and performance abilities, but as a testament to his production prowess. It’s a purely-driven full-circle experience in ways that only one in his shoes can truly understand. “I actually finished the album 25 years to the day that Natasha and I met, November 29, 2009,” he explains. “That was our anniversary. In many ways, I was really just trying to make a record that she would be proud of.”

After one, two, fifteen listens and more, we’ve not a shred of doubt that she would be. This album is for guitar aficionados, for lovers of naked, powerfully honest music, for the eternally insatiable message board minions who scour the cyberscape for all things related to the world of Homme for another dose of Rock excellence, whether desert-infused or otherwise. They can rest comfortably, knowing there’s a new and very special gem in the family crown.

Alain Johannes Keeps The Fire Alive With Spark

7. Fitz & The Tantrums
Picking Up The Pieces

At the beginning of the Summer, Fitz & The Tantrums were an LA band, in a sea of LA bands, that we weren’t going out of our way to discover. Then our readers started recommending them, and that’s when we knew they deserved a chance.

To answer the question inherently presented by anything retro, this band’s debut represents a true revival, rather than an exhumation; Without heart, you’re just a zombie, and Fitz & The Tantrums are not lacking anything in that category. In fact, many of the compositions on Pickin’ Up The Pieces are so perfect and full of conviction that it’s hard not to call them classics without exaggeration. To say that the swaggering, funky street corner sermon Rich Girls one-ups the likes of Mark Ronson and Wino and Duffy is not saying enough, and to say that the flawless, heartstring-plucking album-closer Tighter gives Elton John a run for his money might not even be saying too much.

Through the past few months since its release our acquisition, Picking Up The Pieces has achieved the last thing we expected of it: It only gets better and better. Over just a short period time, it’s already matured beyond any suspicions of gimmickry, and it continues to expertly pluck our heartstrings.

Fitz & Company Raises A Ruckus

8. Arcade Fire
The Suburbs

The Suburbs digs through the dregs of lost identity and heartache, staring mortality in the face while casting a musical Molotov cocktail into the scene that both birthed and anchored Arcade Fire.

A brief, palette-cleansing reprise of this album’s title track bookends a 16-song, richly spellbinding journey that eclipses 2004’s Funeral and its 2007 sequel Neon Bible. There’s a clarity and currency of heart at play within these songs, a finely-tuned meeting of inspiration, vision and ability that will serve as a milestone in what’s sure to be a lengthy, illustrious career for Arcade Fire.

Arcade Fire Incinerate The Suburbs

9. Janelle Monae
The Archandroid

Janelle Monáe’s ArchAndroid is one of the most interesting pop albums to come along in a very long time, if its Gaga-trouncing boundary busting don’t disqualify it from the typically formulaic genre entirely.

Like esteemed new-school funk-mongering crossover pioneers such as Outkast, Gnarls Barkely, and Saul Williams, Janelle Monáe brings a lot more to the table than Gaga’s theatrics and costume, even more than Winehouse’s comparatively straightforward soul revival, and to our delight, advances the entire institution of pop music a step further into exciting new territory.

Anima Ex Machina

10. Sleepy Sun
Fever

If you listened to any of the albums on this list and didn’t like them, that’s okay. But promise us this: If you haven’t listened to Sleepy Sun’s Fever, do so right now. Give it a chance. We’ll wait.

Approach this album as cynically as you wish; as cynically as I did if you’d like. It will surprise you. Sleepy Sun gets absolutely right what too many bands in their genre get wrong: Heterogeneity. These musicians communicate, but it’s always a new angle to the conversation, and there’s always a point. They go down into the rabbit holes, but there’s always someone holding a string leading back out. It’s the opposite of the tiresome excessive hedonism so common among the rest of the atmospheric hippie jam-happy noisemakers.

Sleepy Sun Raises Desert Gods

Given those three bands’ very peculiar sounds, and how Mr. Fertita manages to fit into them so seamlessly, it’s surprising that he found yet another stylistic avenue with a solo project. Entitled Hello=Fire, his solo debut features appearances by QOTSA members Joey Castillo, Troy Van Leeuwen and Michael Shuman, as well as production credits by his Raconteurs cohort Brendan Benson, and it’s well worth checking out. We recently caught up with Dean to talk about this variety of projects.

Firstly, can you tell us a bit about how the Hello=Fire project came to be?

Hello=Fire started in Detroit with a few songs I recorded with Brendan Benson. Over the next year, while I was touring with QOTSA, I would go into studios on days off and work until it was complete. It was a luxury to have everyone around and they made real important contributions to the album.

There are some monstrous pop hooks on Hello=Fire. Did you put your attention specifically on creating them?

The record was pretty spontaneous. I didn’t really have time to rehearse with a band, so I can’t say things were thought out too far in advance. As far as arrangements go, I grew up on a lot of 60’s and 70’s rock and I think that style of songwriting is forever burned into my brain.

The LP has both writing and producing credits shared with Brendan Benson. How did he get involved in this project?

Brendan and I have been friends for a long time and have had a great working relationship. We went back and forth for a while working on each other’s songs and recording in his Detroit studio.

Since the band’s live debut at Spaceland in LA, we’ve been eagerly anticipating more shows. Will we get to see the songs in action again?

I will definitely continue to record and do more shows. It’s just a matter of working out schedules. The show at Spaceland was interesting. I hadn’t played on my own in almost 6 years and only had one day of rehearsal, so the show was teetering on disaster…I loved it.

Comparing this album to your most recent work with The Dead Weather, there isn’t much similarity at all between the two bands. Was there a conscious decision to stay so distant from that band’s dark sound?

There wasn’t a conscious decision to distance myself from anything, but the great thing about music is being able to explore different parts of your personality. Sometimes it’s as simple the people in the room. It’s like conversation… You talk about different things with different people, but the space that I’m in with The Dead Weather is just as natural to me as Hello=Fire.

Do you share the same influences in writing for The Dead Weather and Hello=Fire?

The Dead Weather is darker, but the influences are still rooted in blues.

On the liner notes of both Dead Weather albums, you can see writing credits for just about every possible combination amongst the band’s 4 members. How do you manage to make it all come together so cohesively?

An exciting aspect of the Dead Weather is that what we were doing was never discussed. We didn’t expect to make a full record. It started with the idea of making a 7″ and it exploded from there. I think part of what makes it so cohesive is that we have known each other for a long time. We share a lot of the same ideas about making record and like to let the music tell us where to go.

After being the keyboardist for The Raconteurs on their very first tour, how did you come to join Queens Of The Stone Age?

Hutch, who has worked with QOTSA for many years as the sound engineer was with the Raconteurs in 2006. When that tour ended, he went back to work with QOTSA. It turned out that they were looking for someone to play keys/guitar and he put me in touch with them. I owe him so much for giving me that chance.

In 2008, when both QOTSA and The Raconteurs were on tour, you stayed with the former, and Josh Homme joked about “winning a custody battle” over you. How did you come to the decision of which band to stay with?

QOTSA made me feel a part of the family immediately. There was a feeling that the future of this lineup could be interesting. It was disappointing that schedules didn’t line up better with the Raconteurs, but I think things worked out good for everyone.

Since the previous lineup of the Queens had a 5th member onstage for only a handful of songs, was it a tough process adapting the setlist to have a keyboardist/extra guitarist for the entire show?

I won’t play something if it doesn’t fit or feel like we are adding dimension to a song. There is no room for redundancy. With QOTSA, aside from the obvious parts, I listen for things that are important in recordings that sometimes don’t make it in a live scenario or for ways to emphasize what is already there. The cool thing is that we are always trying to get someplace new, so the live setting lets songs evolve from the recorded versions.

What part of touring South America has piqued your interest the most so far?

I loved every minute we spent in South America. I just didn’t get to see enough and can’t wait for the opportunity to do more extensive touring there.

After QOTSA are done with the current tour, what’s the next plan for the band? Can we expect to see you as a full-time writing/recording member on the next Queens LP, or have you not discussed this yet?

Now that we are home, QOTSA will begin working on a new material. We have no rules on how the record will be done, so I think it could be real collaborative. As a band, we should find ourselves in some new, shark infested water pretty soon.

What the hell is a Triple Decker Record, you ask? Designed and trademarked by White and assembled by United Record Pressing in Nashville, TN, the unique vinyl pressing is the 12″ version of the single with a previously unreleased 7″ vinyl embedded within, which can only be listened to once removed from inside the larger record.

“It’s one of the many mind games we like to play with you here at Third Man Records,” White says in a video about the release, which you can watch below. “You will require a Swiss army knife or a screwdriver,” he explains, a possible first in the world of vinyl.

Also issued as a 7-inch single with a double cover and on a tri-colour vinyl featuring the B-side Jawbreaker (live), the limited edition Triple Decker Record is limited to 300 copies. The 12″ version will come with alternate B-sides No Hassle Night / I Just Want to Make Love to You (live).

Available on Friday (September 17), 100 copies will be sold directly in the Third Man Records store in Nashville, with the other 200 being distributed through selected record shops and randomly via mail order.

For more information, visit ThirdManRecords.com. We also took a tour of Third Man Records last summer, led by Jack White himself. Check out that story here.

The festival always has a few surprise appearances by acts during the day (last year, The Dead Weather came unannounced), and this time it wasn’t any different. Thom Yorke played a short surprise set, mostly by himself, on one of the side stages, and was joined by Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood for a few Radiohead classics. The performance was not broadcast, but here’s a short clip of the end of Karma Police, which was obviously a highlight:

As is well-known by now, U2 had to drop their headline slot for the first day of the festival, due to Bono having a medical emergency. Gorillaz were invited to fill in for the kings of stadium-rock, and turned out a pretty damn good performance. During their near-complete recreation of their latest album Plastic Beach, the song Some Kind Of Nature included a guest appearance by Lou Reed. Snoop Dogg joined the band as well, not for Welcome To The World Of Plastic Beach, but to freestyle through the nearly-10-year-old hit Clint Eastwood:

And while U2 were deprived of what would have been their first-ever headline slot at the festival, it seems not all member of the band were willing to accept the loss. Stadium rock king-wannabes Muse, who were headlining the festival for the second time (their first was in 2004) had The Edge join the band for their encore, playing U2’s ultimate crowd-pleaser, Where The Streets Have No Name. So while the festival didn’t get a full U2 performance, Matt Bellamy’s voice (which is, at the moment, in much better shape than Bono’s) would do just fine for at least for one song:

While those three moments were the obvious highlights (and the ones better documented), that’s not to say that they were the only worth mentioning. On the first day, Snoop Dogg had a great performance by himself, before joining Gorillaz on the main stage. Meanwhile, The Black Keys had their Glastonbury debut on the John Peel stage, paying tribute to the legendary radio DJ, telling the crowd “America was never lucky enough to have someone as great as Mr. Peel.” The Flaming Lips were the closing act on the Other Stage, bringing their brand of mass-appealing stage antics with lots of colorful balloons and Wayne Coyne walking inside of his giant plastic hamster ball over the festival crowd. On the second day, The Dead Weather performed their usual killer set on the Pyramid Stage (and you can check out a cool little pre-set interview here).

The third and final day is underway as we write this. We don’t expect quite as many surprises (Julian Casablancas already ruled out a Strokes appearance during his solo set), but Slash is likely to play a solid set, and Stevie Wonder will most certainly close the 40th edition of the festival in style.

With all of this said, the most emotional moment of the final day of Glastonbury 2010 is sure to come from witnessing England’s humiliating elimination from the World Cup.

Photo by Rii Schroer

It was less than a month ago that Jack invited Conan to play at Third Man Record Studios, where they cut a vinyl live recording and spoken word single together in front of a hysterically excited audience – a day before CoCo introduced the band to 85,000 sweaty freaks at Bonnaroo. Now Captain Jack has given the future TBS talk show host dibs on debuting the latest music video from The Dead Weather on teamcoco.com.

Check out the new video for Blue Blood Blues featuring the band performing the track live from a heavily effects-saturated black and white perspective:

If you still have not pre-ordered the aforementioned vinyl featuring Coco’s live performance at Third Man, you can that right here.

After sets by Mini Mansions (featuring Michael Shuman of Queens Of The Stone Age) and Alain Johannes (the fourth Crooked Vulture), A new band called Hello=Fire was debuted.

Hello=Fire features Dean Fertita of The Dead Weather / Queens Of The Stone Age, and Brendan Benson of The Raconteurs. Joey Castillo of QOTSA played drums, and Troy Van Leeuwen of QOTSA / Sweethead joined the band after being invited earlier in the day to play keys & guitar.

It was a family affair, with Josh Homme and Brody Dalle in attendance at the filled-to-capacity club.

The factor that cannot be left out of the equation is that there currently exists an abundance of female singers in the pop-rock-country-infused-blues-folk-whatever genre. Not to sound misogynistic, but you can go from Jenny Lewis to Cat Power, to Zooey Deschanel, to Alison Krauss, to KT Tunstall, all the way down to Taylor Swift, and you have a bit of a crowded market here. Yes, all those singers have their singularities that make them stand out from each other in special ways (except for Swift), but it’s still hard to see what room there would be for Karen Elson to stand out. This is the same gut-reaction anyone in their right mind would have to a new trip-hop act these days – we already have Portishead and Massive Attack, and those are as good as it gets, so why more?

The only reason I’m even mentioning those other female singers is because, on a first listen, The Ghost Who Walks will likely remind you of them too – especially Jenny Lewis. But I had a look at Karen’s biography on her website, saw her referencing PJ Harvey’s “spooky” video for Down By The Water, which was all the rage on MTV back then. I kept that word “spooky” on my mind during the second listen through, and the beauty of the album suddenly started to flow out of the speakers.

The Ghost opens with its title track, which, according to the author, is a nickname she had when she was a teenager for being “tall, pale, and a little bit haunted”. And indeed, “haunting” is an adjective that’s appropriate for a big portion of this album’s atmosphere, with no shortage of creepy keyboard and guitar effects showing up whenever you feel like the album might get stale.

The inherent eeriness of these “haunted” songs is arguably what makes them interesting in the first place. Tracks like Pretty Babies and 100 Years From Now, while cheery, poppy songs on the surface, show a darker side upon closer inspection thanks to little details like a decaying slide guitar in the background. This eeriness, however, is often more curious than properly scary. For example, it’s not nearly as dark as, say, PJ Harvey’s White Chalk, but a comparison can surely be drawn. While White Chalk sounded like a woman accepting the fate of dwelling in darkness for eternity, The Ghost Who Walks sounds like a woman who would be more than glad to get to know the ghosts who haunt her existence before she can properly join them.

That curiosity is well represented in the instrumentation too, more often than not featuring a band complete with violins, and accordions, and backup singers, and whatnot. Karen’s backing band is comprised of Jackson Smith on guitar, Rachelle Garniez (from Karen’s cabaret group The Citizen’s Band) on accordion and backup vocals, My Morning Jacket’s Carl Broemel on pedal steel, and the exact same rhythm section from The Dead Weather: Jack White on drums and Jack Lawrence on bass, who, of course, do a tremendous job.

The band showcases two slightly distinct styles of playing on the album. The first one, more apparent on side one, is comprised of mostly standard, pleasant pop-folk-rock tunes that exemplify the aforementioned “spookiness” through keyboards and slide guitar. The other style, more apparent on the second half of the album, brings out the country violins, multi-layered vocals and accordion. This immediately recalled one of my favorite experiments in country-rock-folk-etc, The Raconteur’s Consolers of the Lonely. Tracks like Cruel Summer and Garden present a welcome complexity that’s not unlike that of the Racs’ second album, surely thanks in part to Little Jack Lawrence’s bass. And then, towards the end, you get a couple of tracks that rock harder than any of the previous songs: A Thief At My Door, with its absolutely delicious breakdown, and the closing track Mouths to Feed, which recalls a bit of Cat Power’s finest moments, if only she decided to use a full band.

Looking back on my “why more?’ question, I can attest that Karen Elson does differentiate herself from all those other singers aforementioned. While The Ghost Who Walks is a bit short on particularly awesome moments, it’s an overall cohesive album that has a good balance between atmosphere and strong songwriting. And it’s more than enough promise to show that Karen Elson has what it takes to rise above “me-too” status.

In case you don’t remember, the soundtrack for the previous movie, New Moon, drew a considerable amount of attention from the music press, particularly because it included new tracks from high-profile acts such as Thom Yorke, Muse, The Killers and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. Though we weren’t particularly impressed by the results, it was a noble effort nonetheless.

What was interesting, however, was seeing the fans of such acts complaining about their appearance on such a mainstream, whiny-teen oriented product, as if these bands were being “lost,” or (God forbid!) “selling out.”

Now, with the Eclipse soundtrack bringing new tracks from certified-awesome acts like The Dead Weather, The Black Keys, Beck, UNKLE, Cee-Lo Green, and more, the shitstorm is on again, coming mostly from fans who feel some false sense of entitlement, as if these bands belong to them and have no reason to associate themselves with this franchise.

They’ve got it wrong. This is a good thing, and great things can come out of it.

Remember the Transformers movies? Both the Twilight and Transformers franchises are obnoxiously omnipresent in the media, and curiously have very similar critical responses. However, one glance at the Transformers albums, and you see acts like Linkin Park, The Used, Taking Back Sunday, Hoobastank and even fucking Nickelback. They played it safe there. Most of the kids/teenagers who enjoy Michael Bay movies are used to mediocre products anyway, so they’re perfectly fine with having mediocre music associated to it. These people knew damn well that Linkin Park’s What I’ve Done was playing during the credits after Transformers ended. And these are the same people who had to Google “what’s the song that plays during the credits at the end of Twilight” to find out that it’s Radiohead’s 15 Step. See where I’m getting at here?

The fact is, putting good bands on soundtracks for mainstream movies entices curiosity. A lot of people who never listened to Radiohead ended up giving the band a try after seeing Twilight, and no doubt gave Thom Yorke’s solo effort a chance after New Moon. The same can be said about Muse, who are showing up for the third time on these compilations. And now, with Eclipse, we’ll have people discovering The Dead Weather, The Black Keys, and Unkle. This is great. When people start listening to good bands, they stop paying attention to mediocre bands. The more people listen to good bands, the better. Wouldn’t you rather live in a world where no one buys Nickelback CDs anymore? Wouldn’t you rather these teenagers started spending their allowances on bands that actually deserve it?

Spreading good taste is good for mankind. The world has too many suicide emos as it is. And don’t worry, just because your favorite band has a song in a movie about shiny vampires, it doesn’t mean they’ll start making shitty songs.

The tracklist for The Twilight Saga: Eclipse is as follows:

1. Metric: Eclipse (All Yours)
2. Muse: Neutron Star Collision (Love Is Forever)
3. The Bravery: Ours
4. Florence + The Machine: Heavy In Your Arms
5. Sia: My Love
6. Fanfarlo: Atlas
7. The Black Keys: Chop And Change
8. The Dead Weather: Rolling In On A Burning Tree
9. Beck & Bat For Lashes: Let’s Get Lost
10. Vampire Weekend: Jonathan Low
11. UNKLE: With You In My Head (w/ The Black Angels)
12. Eastern Conference Champions: A Million Miles An Hour
13. Band Of Horses: Life On Earth
14. Cee-Lo Green: What Part Of Forever
15. Howard Shore: Jacob’s Theme

Sea Of Cowards is more percussive and beat-driven than its predecessor, though there’s occasional highlight flare when drummer/co-vocalist/mastermind White steps into six-string shoes and peels off some blues-scale spitfire. The malignant sex-thuggery is deadly sharp from the get-go as Jack brags, “All the white girls trip when I sing at Sunday service.”- If Blue Blood Blues told the story of the entire album, we’d be hearing a Jack-driven operation from vocals to hi-hats – that elusive and desperately desired solo record fans have been pining for.

Thankfully, that’s not the direction the Dead Weather is headed in. Stiff-legged and dangerous, all jagged spurs and mescaline grit, the track’s like one blue-black half a violent love story, the opposite side told in the bass-boom slut strut of Hustle and Cuss. Alison Mosshart’s vocal is a slow-rising assault, a lurking, fight-seeking tigress turned tasmanian spaz by the track’s end, roaring the title like she’s foaming at the mouth. Damned if rabies doesn’t suddenly sound dangerously delightful.

The Dead Weather are nothing if not erotically brooding, and it was only a matter of time before the ’80s darkpop / PJ Harvey hybrid of The Difference Between Us was conjured. An easy album highlight, the track captures the Dead Weather’s knack for off-tempo oddity and romantic gravitas in a wash of melancholy.

For all its three minutes and change, I’m Mad feels nearly ten minutes long, pulling us into a catty, minimalist playhouse of Warhol psychedelia. It’s the kind of track that will beguile the pre-existing fan but alienate the casual buyer, a la jabby-riffed cognitive-dissonance jam No Horse. By contrast, safe in the Rock zone, the bark/bite interplay between White and Mosshart on powerful fuzz-buzz lead single Die By The Drop is already holding strong rotation on radio.

Organ-driven and built on a dark-carnival stench of inevitable danger, Gasoline is a new high watermark for TDW. White’s squealing guitar lead vies for airtime with Mosshart’s utterly possessed vocals, for a sound not unlike Icky Thump-era White Stripes.

Fantastic riffery and catchy lyricism from White on Looking At The Invisible Man, though it dissolves into a bit of self-indulgent repetitiveness. By contrast, a little dose of Joan Jett soaks through Jawbreaker, a popped leather collar squealer with a sizzling solo/breakdown and frantic finish. It butts up against closer Old Mary, the first 20 seconds of which is full of mind-shattering low feedback that completely ruins any sort of listening comfort and threatens to cause deep bowel shifting. It’s an odd finish, a disquieting conclusion to a box-cutting album that changes impact with each listen.

If the Dead Weather set out to prove themselves eccentric, they’ve certainly succeeded. Uncompromising, they wear their jacket full of bullet holes proudly, escaping direct classification with varied style & influence, always returning to a core of sexual tension and brooding cool.