Feeling Under The Weather

For a band who have been formed for less than a year, a sell out show at Brixton isn't bad going. Yet when you are called The Dead Weather and your band consists of musical heavyweights such as Jack White, Alison Mosshart, Dean Fertita and Jack Lawrence, it is perhaps somewhat less surprising than originally anticipated.

For whatever reason, female fronted bands seem to have a tougher time making a good impression on audiences than their male counterparts. For every twenty successful male-led bands, there is only one successful female-led group, and this fact was definitely at the forefront of my mind before Mosshart took to the mic. But from the moment she skulked on stage, any doubts that a female lead would not be able to whip the audience up into as much of a frenzy as a male would were quickly banished. Snarling her way through the eighty minute set, Mosshart prowled around the stage with such impressive self-assurance that the audience were left in no doubt that she alone was just as worthy of their attentions as the Stripe sat on drums behind her. Despite spitting out new single 'I Cut Like A Buffalo' with an admirable tenacity and showcasing new material written just that afternoon, it was still their best known song and show-closer 'Treat Me Like Your Mother' that received the biggest response of the evening.

Photo by Walid Lodin

The Dead Weather's sound is the most raw of anything White has previously released with any of his other bands, and this certainly comes across in their live performance. With his wild, unruly hair and determined ferocity in his playing, White definitely knows how to put on a performance even from the back of the stage; it was like watching a real life Animal from the Muppets take his place in one of London's most famous music venues. Lawrence and Fertita on bass and guitar respectively were not ones to be sidelined however, and both assaulted their instruments with such voracity it was as if their lives (and musical dignity) depended on it.

However, despite the electricity and enthusiasm the quartet exuded, it is an undeniable fact that a percentage of people, however large or small, were at the gig out of curiosity to see Jack White. Don't get me wrong, 'Horehound' is one of the most impressive debuts of the year, but you do have to ask yourself if it would have attained the success and acclaim it has if it had been released by four unknowns. Unfortunately, the answer is probably not, and the extended cheers that rose from the crowd as White stepped to the front of the stage to take lead vocals on a couple of songs did nothing to dispell this possibility.

White and Co. have worked hard to demonstrate that The Dead Weather are not simply a short term side project that they've involved themselves in for a pleasant distraction. Mosshart has already declared their second album to be half completed already, though despite White's comments to the media, she is determined their next release will not be amusingly entitled 'Morehound'. Whatever title it is released under, it should cement their status as a credible rock outfit and finally earn them the respect they deserve as a consolidated group, rather than four independent musicians haphazardly strewn together.

http://www.thedeadweather.com/