There is a violent interplay between Jack White and Alison Mosshart that forms the backbone of Sea of Cowards, the latest from The Dead Weather. Mosshart’s powerful vocals and White’s living-legend guitar playing seem locked in combat at times while simultaneously meshing into riotous anarchy.

WARNING: Fans of The White Stripes and Raconteurs may skip this paragraph and proceed deeper into the review. Now that they’re gone here’s the harsh truth. This band is too good to be a side project. Yes, that’s testimony to the underappreciated White’s skills, but if forced to choose one band to record with permanently, White should pick the Dead Weather. Sea of Cowards is often sloppy and disjointed and seems rushed. But at their best White and Mosshart create a Joplin-meets-Hendrix dynamic that is simply too good to be relegated to recording infrequently.

Welcome back White Stripes and Raconteurs fans; as we were saying White is arguably the engine of modern rock and roll and Sea of Cowards features plenty of his driving, outrageous guitar. Mosshart’s vocals are more than a foil; they propel this album to its greatest moments.

Dean Fertita from Queens of the Stone Age and Raconetuers’ bass player Jack Lawrence fill out the all-star lineup and add layers of sound richer than Dead Weather’s first album Horehound.

And Mosshart is clearly more comfortable here. “I’m not the way that you found me/I’m neither here nor there/One day I’m happy and healthy/Next I ain’t doing so well,” she sings with gritty realism on “The Difference Between Us”, the album’s best track. White’s psychedelic riffs push Mosshart to a level she’s never achieved with The Kills. The implied female-dominant sexual violence of the song explodes on all levels. Mosshart is scarily perfect singing, “You can cry like a baby/just let me do what I need to” and White adds a little U2-New Years Day-inspired drumming to accompany his acid guitar.

The closest Mosshart and White come to a vocal duet is on the single “Die By The Drop.” But it’s not so much a duet as it is alternating verses. Still, when Mosshart sings “Some people die just a little/some people die by the drop” and White echoes her every sentence while his guitar runs wild, you’ll be challenged to find a better rock and roll track of the past few years.

Too bad not every song achieves this level. Sea of Cowards is a deeply flawed album with some tracks that should have been left in the studio (particularly the closer Old Mary, and yeah, we get it