The other day I was reading the paper and on the front page of one of the sections was covering a band with an album called 'Horehound'. I didn't have time to read the entire paper so I skipped that section and read the Life section instead while idly considering where the name "horehound" came from and what it meant. I immediately made the obvious associations and forgot about it. A short while later I picked up one of my recently arrived Golden Guides, a lovely series of guide books published from the 1950's up to 1990.
I had the guidebook on birds of north america as a child and when I found the 53-year old book as an adult I was so taken with reminiscence and the perfect illustrations I decided to purchase the entire set of guides. I have been receiving a new guide or two nearly every day for the last few weeks to the delight of myself and the probable detriment of my postal worker.
The Golden Guide I had received that day was about herbs and spices. I flipped through the pages and found myself reading about no other herb than horehound! This sort of thing happens to me all the time when I'm reading, I'll come across a word I'm unfamiliar with, look it up in the dictionary and then find myself encountering it all the time. But this is the first time I've come across an album name, not known the origin of the name and then come across the word in another book within half an hour. So this little coincidence spurred me on to check out the band and the album.
Horehound is the debut album from The Dead Weather and it was just released on July 14th, 2009. The band consists of The Kills' Alison Mosshart, Jack White of The White Stripes on drums, Raconteurs bassist Jack Lawrence, and Queens of the Stone Age keyboardist/guitarist Dean Fertita. Horehound has been receiving favorable reviews from the usual suspects. Pitchfork says:
I had the guidebook on birds of north america as a child and when I found the 53-year old book as an adult I was so taken with reminiscence and the perfect illustrations I decided to purchase the entire set of guides. I have been receiving a new guide or two nearly every day for the last few weeks to the delight of myself and the probable detriment of my postal worker.
The Golden Guide I had received that day was about herbs and spices. I flipped through the pages and found myself reading about no other herb than horehound! This sort of thing happens to me all the time when I'm reading, I'll come across a word I'm unfamiliar with, look it up in the dictionary and then find myself encountering it all the time. But this is the first time I've come across an album name, not known the origin of the name and then come across the word in another book within half an hour. So this little coincidence spurred me on to check out the band and the album.
Horehound is the debut album from The Dead Weather and it was just released on July 14th, 2009. The band consists of The Kills' Alison Mosshart, Jack White of The White Stripes on drums, Raconteurs bassist Jack Lawrence, and Queens of the Stone Age keyboardist/guitarist Dean Fertita. Horehound has been receiving favorable reviews from the usual suspects. Pitchfork says:
But while built from the same rudiments as its principals' other bands, the Dead Weather are greatly distinguished by a richness of atmosphere. Over its 11 tracks, Horehound rarely relents in its murky, humid, southern-gothic ambience-- one that's greatly thickened by Fertita's Dr. John-style organ mojo and Lawrence's array of fuzz-bass effects...The songs on Horehound don't so much rock as writhe, reinstituting the idea of the blues as a sinister, morally corrupting force that's as much the province of voodoo priests and witch doctors as musicians.If you haven't checked out The Dead Weather yet and end up enjoying the music on Horehound, you have my obsession with Golden Guides to thank.
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