The latest musical adventure by Jack White (The White Stripes, The Raconteurs), epitomizes the alt-rock ethic: do the music you love, do it yourself, and do it fast. The Dead Weather brings together lead singer Alison Mosshart (half of the London-based lo-fi post-punk duo The Kills), Queens Of The Stone Age guitarist Dean Fertita, Raconteurs bassist Jack Lawrence, and White on drums and vocals. White also produced the group’s debut album, Horehound, recorded in just three weeks earlier this year at his newly constructed Nashville studio.

Coming hard and fast on the heels of its predecessor, the ceaselessly energetic Sea of Cowards is a robust and vigorous second act filled with primal, bone-quaking rock rhythms and the same stellar urban blues and throbbing sleaze. But this time, The Dead Weather push their sound even further, brilliantly building upon their raw chemistry to create one of the most vital sounding albums you’ll hear all year. Sea of Cowards pulls out all of the stops, and succeeds at being a daringly ambitious rock thrill ride.

Better still, since White is involved, the sound is incredible. An avowed analog fanatic, he’s again ensured that sonics are given as much care and attention as the music.

“Like its 2009 debut, The Dead Weather’s second album is packed with the kind of thumping, snarly, bluesy hard rock that just begs to be played loud… The Nashville quartet stays gritty, groovy and guitar-driven throughout. They get down and dirty on the sexy, swampy, organ-tinged “Gasoline,” and a little bit punk on the thumpy and thick “Jawbreaker,” with its distortion-soaked vocals and guitars.”

–Sandy Cohen, San Francisco Chronicle, May 10, 2010

“”Sea of Cowards” (Third Man) is bolder than its predecessor, mainly because it seriously dials up the flamboyance quotient. Singer Allison Mosshart shows off a few new moves, moving things from a simmer to a boil. The album feels looser, more daring in the way it plays with sound and arranging. Keyboards squeal and feed back like guitars on “I’m Mad,” and the instruments sound like they’re short-circuiting on “Looking at the Invisible Man.””

–Greg Kot, Chicago Tribune, May 10, 2010

““Sea of Cowards,” the band’s second album, arrives in a foul mood, with a high-style stake in misanthropy. Alison Mosshart inhabits the role of a lead singer cagily, at once beckoning and rebuffing affection; her fellow vocalist Jack White does the same thing, with ruddier results…. The band still works with a heat-blasted byproduct of garage rock, hard rock and boogie, with riffs both stark and heavy gauge.”

–Nate Chinen, New York Times “Critics Choice,” May 9, 2010