MUSIC COLUMN: THE DEAD WEATHER

Fast Work or The Slow Fade of Jack White?

By: Ramus Dahl

February 9, 2010

Articles extolling the genius of Jack White have become terribly redundant and monotonous. Yes, the man’s a genius, but the true essence of his genius lies in his ability to reference all the great blues-men who labored for decades in obscurity to create a music that has left perhaps the largest artistic and cultural fingerprint on Western civilization. There’s a pointing backwards in Jack White’s career that seems to have all intentions to lure you to discover the sounds of a bygone era.

All this adds up to the same risk The Rolling Stones took by naming themselves after a line from Muddy Waters. Once you take the bait and begin to discover the richness of that which White and the Stones are offering, you may never look back. It’s career suicide. The best White and the Stones (and many others, such as Dylan or The Animals, who know this all so well) can offer you is a handful of Cliff Notes to the real thing that sprung up from the Mississippi River between the waning years of the Reconstruction era and up through the Great Depression. Herein lies their genius.

Without question, the likes of Jack White and the Glitter Twins of The Rolling Stones have ample doses of good old-fashioned artsy narcissism to go ‘round. By all superficial glances, a large portion of their careers is spent on manufacturing and sustaining their ridiculous image. Nonetheless, the irony rests in their dogged devotion to the blues, to American roots music, a devotion that under-girds and guides every and all of their artistic pursuits, regardless the degree of pomp ad façade.

In other words, as much as he cultivates his image and sacrifices himself up to advertisement and cliché, Jack White seems to be trying to disappear from his music entirely, to create a canon for which the music itself is given authorship and notoriety, and his name and face are left to fade into peaceful anonymity along with the good company of unsung blues giants like Garfield Akers or Mississippi Joe Callicott.

White’s latest venture, this Dead Weather outfit, is a prime example. White has locked himself up behind the drum-kit and tossed the majority of the vocal duties to Alison Mosshart of The Kills. Speaking of, the Dead Weather, apparently, will be releasing their follow-up to last year’s Horehound in April. The album is nearly complete, and White, according to reports, will soon be putting the final touches on the record, which (he claims) is “bluesier and heavier than we ever thought.”

In addition, I’ve heard murmurings around Austin that White and the Dead Weather will be making a surprise visit to SXSW along with his “Third Man Records and Novelties” pop show after successful showings in London, New York, and Los Angeles. Just in case you think that anything I have written here denotes anything other that a profound love of all things Jack White, know that I suspect I’ll be one of the lunatic vinylholics that sits in line at 5:00 a.m. with my photographer to get my hands on one or two of the rare, affordable 7” that are only available to those who happen to “be there.”

Even more, a friend just passively mentioned that White is allegedly planning to produce Dolly Parton’s next record.  (We’ll certainly have more on that as more information unfolds.) All the same, the majority of us have been clambering for another White Stripes record, which surely makes perfect sense. Yet it seems that White is all but neglecting the project that launched him into Rock and Roll prominence, and (quite literally) gave him his name. But I can’t accuse White of chasing after his own ego at the expense of breaking up and forsaking the band that “made” him (there goes the “Lennon factor”), and we can’t really minimize his creative endeavors as any kind of mere feeble attempt to boost his “guitar god” status (as, say, the critics of Clapton, Beck, or Page).

No, Jack White is slowly killing himself for the sake of the music, and none of us will know about it until it’s too late.

And that, my friends, is exactly how he’d probably like it.

The Dead Weather's 'Sea of Cowards' is scheduled to be released by Third Man Records in April.

Our copy of 'Icky Thump' is all but worn out.