Jack White’s latest group The Dead Weather reaches highs that equal the best of two of his other projects, The White Stripes and The Raconteurs. Still, despite excellent musicianship, effective vocals and intriguing lyrics, the group falls a little short overall of sustaining those highs throughout its debut, Horehound, particularly in comparison with The Raconteurs’ two records.

An interesting hard-edged, lyrically dark album, Horehound combines elements of Zeppelin-inspired hard rock with modern takes on alternative and blues themes. The group is at its best when Alison Mosshart, of The Kills, takes lead vocal duties as she does on nine of the 11 tracks.

Her voice is perfectly suited for the band’s style, sometimes evoking a female Robert Plant at others sounding reminiscent of Concrete Blonde’s Johnette Napolitano or for moments even a trace of P.J. Harvey. Comparisons aside, she retains a singular quality that only reminds one of those artists. Her performance here shows her off as one of modern rock’s best singers and front-women.

Things work best on the first two tracks, 60 Feet Tall and Hang You From The Heavens, both written by Mosshart and guitarist Dean Fertita of Queens Of The Stone Age. For this assemblage White plays drums on all but one track and The Raconteurs Jack Lawrence joins in on bass.

White is surprisingly proficient on drums, albeit in a splashy manner. He tends to like using his ride symbols so extensively at times it occasionally clutters the production mix. But he lays down some infectious grooves as on Heavens, a hard rock stop-and-go built around his bass drum and hi-hat groove and Fertita’s ferocious winding guitar riff, which he appears to play with a looping device in concert.

60 Feet Tall hinges on a simple blues riff played by Fertita, Mosshart’s impassioned vocal on a classic blues melody and White driving the proceedings with multiple drum rolls while maintaining the hard rock groove. Fertita provides two tasty solos to good effect.

Other highlights include Mosshart’s singing on Treat Me Like Your Mother, So Far From Your Weapon, Rocking Horse and a heavy take of Bob Dylan’s New Pony. Her vocal resemblance to Napolitano is most evident on Weapon, her own composition that even melodically reminds one of Concrete Blonde. It’s a beautifully understated track, with answer back vocals, that explodes into an infectious chorus sung in unison.

Mother, a band composition, is a frantic and compelling track again showcasing Mosshart’s voice and a lyric indicative of the tone of the entire record — dark and challenging. Musically this track rips through a funky, hard rock groove overlaid with what sounds like a guitar and synth in unison on the main riff. The bridge doubles the tempo and opens into an another intense guitar riff that leads back to the main theme.

The groove-setting bass riff on Rocking Horse is played by Fertita as Lawrence provides a vibrato-laden guitar in the atmospheric sounding blues-oriented track on which Mosshart’s voice is doubled and then joined in harmony by one of the male singers. More answer backs to Mosshart’s lead wind through the straight blues of New Pony that comes off as anything but straight. Fertita is showcased here on a penetrating solo and White again delivers another stellar, almost frantic hard rock groove.

Bone House, another band tune, seemingly starts with an electronic drum groove before settling in with White’s trap set over which Fertita lays a synth sounding riff. It’s nearly impossible to stand still to the groove.

Surprisingly, one of the least effective tunes is one White sings. Cut Like A Buffalo is arranged in a heavy reggae mode with Fertita on organ. The song has a driving track but a melody that never really grabs the listener. It’s more spoken and shouted than sung. Will There Be Enough Water? in contrast is an appropriate album closer, a sparsely arranged blues tune on which White sings and plays acoustic guitar with minimalist yet penetrating lyrics

Others that produce mixed results are the industrial sounding instrumental 3 Birds, laden with eerie effects but which never develops beyond the strange soundscape, and No Hassle Night on which Mosshart’s vocal appears to be doubled by White in a monotone delivery.

As mentioned there’s a dark vibe running through the album, including the packaging from the cover shot of Mosshart, whose pose looks like an image from the movie The Ring, to the booklet that has black and white images of guns, bullets, skull & bones and what appears to be a series of slightly varying photos or artistic images of a flattened impaled frog-like figure. Or is it an altered flower with slightly different masked faces? Hard to tell.

The lyrics hold up their end of the bargain as well:

You’re so cold and dangerous
I can’t leave you be
You got the kind of loving
I need constantly

or

I never know what mood you be
Be mine, be kind but be cruel to me
I’m walkin’ away now
On step forward and back three

I like to grab you by the hair
And sell you off to the devil

and

Stand up like a man
You better learn to shake hands
Look me in the eye now,
Treat me like you mother

In all an interesting and succesful debut, albeit with a few slight shortcomings, which hit the top of the Alternative charts earlier this summer. Whatever reservations I’ve had about the album, it’s impossible to deny the effectiveness of the group’s live performance and stage act as witnessed below.