The Dead Weather - 9:30 Club Record Release Show

Posted by: pjsykes – Jul 17, 2009

I’ll admit that I didn’t have incredibly high expectations for Dead Weather. I have always been a fan of the White Stripes, and I feel that De Stijl and White Blood Cells are amazing albums, but their later work and Jack White’s excursions with The Raconteurs never moved me one way or the other. This uncertain position allowed me to enter the 9:30 Club with a blank slate on Tuesday night for the interesting on paper combination of members from the White Stripes, Queens of the Stone Age, The Kills, and The Raconteurs.

Upon entering, I was greeted with the ferocious screams of Marissa from Screaming Females. The band tore the audience and their instruments apart, combining disparate elements from post-punk, 70’s rock, glam, and dance music into a perfectly executed stop n’ howl set that seemed to convert nearly half the crowd. It’s incredibly rare that I come across an opening band that holds my attention with such vigor, but Screaming Females had me by the throat. (I conducted an interview with the band that will be available soon.)

After the noise died down and the band left the stage, two impeccably dressed men in black suits and derby hats prowled around the stage intently tuning, testing, and turning on every instrument crossing the stage. Then, to the soundtrack of an old blues number, the band appeared and ripped into “60 Feet Tall”, which recalled all of the rock swagger of a stadium band in the 70’s crammed into the mid-size space of the 9:30 Club.

Leading up to the show, I was quite skeptical as to how a band that seemed so hastily assembled, regardless of their pedigree, would fare on their first tour. I’ll simply say that they had the looseness and swagger that could only come from a group of musicians that needed a bit of uncertainty to drive them into the sort of reckless blues-soaked jams that I witnessed last night. Allison Mosshart trolled the stage with the sort of swagger that would befit a drunken Joan Jett or a barely sober Jennifer Herrema (PLEASE tell me you guys remember Royal Trux) and managed capture the heart of the audience without lapsing into parody.

It was a hell of a night and a hell of a rock show.

words: Landis Wine
photos: PJ Sykes

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