Jack White's collaboration with vocalist Allison Mosshart is more than just a one-off. The Dead Weather recently released ther second album, Sea of Cowards, and they've ratcheted up the aural assault.
Heavier basslines and thick walls of sonic sludge serve as an undercurrent for Mosshart's vocal experimentations. She easily switches from loud to soft dynamics--and her harmonies with Jack White's higher growl create an effect that is spooky good.
The band's live show is reported to face meltingly heavy with lots of strobes. It's just colorful corner of Jack White's expanding universe.
Jack White is the rock equivalent of Ben & Jerry's. Every few months he swirls a few new ingredients into the mix, creating sonic concoctions that are always unique but clearly part of the larger White brand.
The latest tasty incarnation, The Dead Weather, finds White on drums and sharing vocal duties with The Kills' Alison Mosshart. Darker than the Stripes and Raconteurs, it's an interesting departure with Queen of the Stone Age's Dean Fertita handling guitar duties.
The U.S. summer tour kicks off at the 9:30 Club on Monday and Tuesday, July 13-14, which coincides with the release of the full-length, Horehound.
In the interim, they're giving away a free copy of the single, "Treat Me Like Your Mother," when you submit your email address for band updates.
It's relatively easy to rattle off a list of great songs or albums, but what defines a great recording artist? Is it record sales? #1 songs? A showcase night on American Idol?
Producer Brian Eno once noted, The Velvet Underground never sold a lot of records, but everyone who bought one went on to form a band.
Ani DiFranco, on the other hand, sells a lot of records. But she does it on her own terms. DiFranco founded Righteous Babe, an independent label, long before the Internet was a series of tubes while reimagining an artists' business model--and redefining the role of the singer-songwriter--for the MySpace generation.
Bands such as the Grateful Dead and Phish reinvented their songs and set lists every night, creating a new concert experience for fiercely loyal fans and introducing a series of live albums and bootlegs that, arguably, are just as important as their studio work.
Jeff Buckley is fondly remembered for one amazing album. And, like a lot of artists who died too young, a catalog of posthumous releases (and an assembly line of vocal imitators) has tried to fill the void.
George Clinton receives royalties every time someone samples Parliament-Funkadelic. When does he ever get credit for the originals?
Leonard Cohen and Tom Waits are enjoying a renaissance in the twilight of their careers. They never experienced the mass adulation (and scorn) as when Bob Dylan plugged in an electric guitar, but where would popular music be without Various Positions or Rain Dogs?
Are younger songwriters like Jack White and Ryan Adams so prolific--with so many incarnations--that it's hard to identify a career-defining album?
How many of these artists qualify as the Greatest Artists of All Time?
