The second album by the Dead Weather, Jack White's current singing-drummer gig and gothic-blues holiday, is a rock of action — nothing but action. There is barely room to breathe, much less sing along, in these vicious twists and blitzkrieg segues. "Blue Blood Blues" is a furious pileup of Jack Lawrence's grunting fuzz bass, Dean Fertita's abrasive skidding guitar and bizarre doo-wop vocal pepper, pushed around by White's mule-kick outbursts at his kit. "I'm Mad" zigzags between fire-dance delirium and drunken-Godzilla stomp, with jolts of abused synthesizer and vocalist Alison Mosshart's she-devil vengeance. Technically, these 11 tracks are songs, with titles and hooks. The effect, though, is more like a precisely arranged parade of spasms, blasted at you in a kind of aural IMAX. Last year's Horehound had the same feral air. But the moving parts on Sea of Cowards — the distortion on Fertita's guitar riffs in "Die by the Drop"; the clang of White's pie-plate-cymbal crashes in "Hustle and Cuss"; his and Mosshart's incantatory bursts and lost-soul harmonies — come faster, meaner and fatter. There are more single-worthy tunes on White's records with the Raconteurs; in the White Stripes, he prefers his blues with limits. But with this band, White lets himself go over the top. Don't be too cool to go along.

“Youth Knows No Pain”

“Like on 'Youth Knows No Pain' — we are the ones that should demonstrate, because we can take it,” Likke Li said. “We can pierce ourselves, take Ecstasy, dance all night and still go to work at our McDonald's jobs.” Despite the hedonistic sentiment in the song, the Swedish singer also admitted in hindsight her youth had repercussions. “I remember when I was 18-19 and feeling that I know it all,” Li said. “I always feel that I know it all. But that song is about realizing you don’t, and reflecting, ‘Boy, if I only knew what would follow.’”