Dead Weather’s metal storm

July 20, 2009|Jonathan Perry, Globe Correspondent

Alison Mosshart stole Jack White’s star Saturday night. You, like most of us, probably went to the Dead Weather show at House of Blues to watch White - singer-guitarist for the White Stripes - play the drums in his new supergroup. You likely left with the impression of how completely Mosshart, whose day job is singer for the British duo the Kills, commandeered the stage.

Even the charismatic White was no match for Mosshart’s feral presence - and in her case, “presence’’ is an absurd understatement. There she was stalking the stage on the opener, “60 Feet Tall,’’ in leopard-print blouse and painted-on black jeans; a heap of flailing hair and high boot heels kicking out from the epicenter of a mercurial storm of metallic riffs and bilious punk attitude. She was equal parts Iggy Pop, Patti Smith, Johnny Thunders, and even Raggedy Ann rolled into one (that is, if Raggedy Ann had ever hung spectacularly on a microphone stand).

While Mosshart made for the perfect visual distillation of the Dead Weather’s damp, dark basement clang - a kind of disemboweled blues crossed with junkyard metal - and White was the shrewd enabler egging everything on from behind his drum kit, the other two guys were no slouches either. Bassist Jack Lawrence also plays in the Raconteurs, and guitarist Dean Fertita is a member of Queens of the Stone Age.

If the band’s pedigree, and the notion of what that intriguing alchemy might yield, seemed too good to be true, in a sense it was. As lethally potent as the music was on a handful of numbers - the deliciously malevolent “Hang You From the Heavens’’ and the White-Mosshart duet, “Rocking Horse,’’ among them - the songs have yet to catch up to the supergroup.

The real surprises during Saturday’s 60-minute set were the blistering, blow-the-dust-off encore covers of “Forever My Queen,’’ by Pentagram, and Bob Dylan’s “New Pony.’’