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"The album contains all the elements that I enjoy about Whitesnake," frontman David Coverdale tells Billboard.com. "The responses I've been getting are that the album is a heady cocktail that embraces the whole history of Whitesnake within one album. Which was not planned, but fortunately, I'll drink two of those cocktails!"

Asked if loyal fans who had bought Led Zeppelin product in various formats over the years should buy "Mothership," Page replied, "Please don't -- I don't want you to buy it."

The more conventional, traditional Cooley may not win as many critical plaudits as the idiosyncratic Hood, but he's outclassed his comrade over the group's last two, uneven records, contributing gems like "Where the Devil Don't Stay" and "Space City" while Hood was busy handing out self-help bromides. A tougher, smarter, funnier version of the prototypical alt-country gunslinger, Cooley's in rare wise-cracking form this time around, unspooling quick-witted, sin-soaked vignettes of colorful loners and losers that hearken back to DBT's pre-Southern Rock Opera incarnation as supreme underground redneck jokesters.

"We're working on it," Perkins tells Billboard.com. "As far as the packaging and the content, it's going to be loaded. We're hoping to step it up into kind of a more 'collector's item' sort of situation. As far as the content, I've got a whole six or seven boxes full of stuff. We're going through it with Warner Bros., and seeing what's appropriate -- what's usable as far as, 'How far do we want to go with lo-fi?' In a perfect world, I would hope to see it out by the summer, but I don't think that's possible. Maybe fall."

Pitchfork: A Blessing and a Curse seemed like an intentionally concise record.

PH: It was, very much so. It was the reaction to everyone telling us our records were too long. I love short records. Everyone always bitches the records are too long, especially the label, so we figured, alright, we'll make a short record. We tried for 43 minutes, and came as close as you can get with three songwriters. It'd be so cool to do the short quick burst and get the hell out. I love that shit. But it don't work with what we do. It's like a big ol' V-8 muscle car. It ain't real tight around the curves, but it's real good on the straightaway! That's the kind of band we are.

This record was very much [a] reaction to that record. That record had all these rules, all this stuff we were going to do or not do-- especially not do. We had this list. It was not going to be the least bit Southern, it was not going to be geographically specific, it was not going to have a storyline or story songs, even. It was pretty much going to go against all our strengths.

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By our estimation, they could've chopped about eight of the 19 tracks and still had themselves a solid, ambitious record (there are songs from Patterson Hood, Mike Cooley and bassist Shonna Tucker, so we're sure they could've whittled from each stash, though Shonna only contributed three). Much of the muck happens in the middle: Brighter opens and closes strong. That said, it's definitely better, grittier than the underwhelming A Blessing And A Curse.

For his part, guitarist Chris Walla describes the album as "really weird. It's really, really good, I think, but it's totally a curve ball, and I think it's gonna be a really polarizing record. But I'm really excited about it. It's really got some teeth. The landscape of the thing is way, way more lunar than the urban meadow sort of thing that has been happening for the last couple of records."

"I feel like there's a confidence in the material, and a communication between the three of us that hasn't been there for some time," frontman Michael Stipe told Uncut. "We didn't talk to each other for a couple of records -- as friends or as bandmates. And we reached a point before this LP where we just sat down at a table and hashed it out."

The legendary band will perform at Tennessee's Bonnaroo festival in June 2008 after lead singer Robert Plant had a "change of heart" over the decision to follow up their comeback concert at London's O2 arena earlier this month with further dates.