Recap The Dead Weather at The Vic

Despite including one of modern rock's biggest names (Jack White) and one of its most intriguing presences (The Kills’ Alison Mosshart), The Dead Weather kept a mostly low profile at its first Chicago show at the Vic on Tuesday night. Rather than engaging in stage banter and ingratiating audience interaction, the supergroup left it up to the waves of fuzz and a pummeling, strobe-heavy light show to provide the appropriately trippy atmosphere for its sludgy blues-rock.

That’s not to say The Dead Weather put on a lazy performance. Mosshart stalked through the shadows of the stage like the effortless rock star she is, alternately mounting the monitors, falling to all fours to pound on the floor, and crouching against the speakers like a junkie overdosing on reverb. Her howling vocals were on full display from the moment the set opened with “60 Feet Tall,” reaching their apex during the shrieking “Cut Like A Buffalo,” and her gyrations against the guitar she strapped on for “So Far From Your Weapon” would make even the ballsiest hair-metal cock-rocker blush. The usually pallid Jack White looked like a borderline beefcake behind the drums, showing just as much agility at his first instrument as he does on the guitar with his other bands. But unlike in his other bands, the normally front-and-center White deferred the spotlight—such as it was on the uniformly un-spotlit stage—to Mosshart, piping up only once, six songs in, to introduce his band members.

But when White emerged from behind the kit, the audience’s allegiance became apparent. While Mosshart earned a good deal of attention during her time up front, any move from White from behind the drums elicited screams 10 times louder than anything heard during the rest of the set. After spending the first three songs hidden in the murky depths of the stage, he stepped to the mic for the opening bars of a cover of Them’s “You Just Can’t Win,” but quickly retreated back behind the skins for the rest of the song. It looked like it would be almost entirely Mosshart’s show until White handed the sticks over to bassist Jack Lawrence to join his lead vocalist at the mic for a sexy, spectacular run-through of “Will There Be Enough Water.” White and Mosshart shared a microphone during the song’s slow, subdued opening verse, leaning toward each other with such intimacy as to elicit sitcom-audience-style “whoooos” from the obviously titillated audience. But that intriguingly quiet moment quickly veered off into a blistering guitar solo from White, sending the audience into a frenzy that continued after the band left the stage, leaving behind a drawn-out stretch of fuzzy reverb to accompany—and, eventually, antagonize—the cheering crowd.

White, Mosshart, Lawrence, and guitarist/organist Dean Fertita quickly returned for an encore—preceded by White finally acknowledging the crowd with a simple, “Hi Chicago”—that kicked off with a cover of Pentagram’s “Forever My Queen” before transitioning into the scorching lead single from Horehound, “Treat Me Like Your Mother.”

The night ended with the band’s driving, chanting take on Bob Dylan’s “New Pony,” during which Mosshart draped herself across her monitors and the sold-out crowd reached out toward her unresponsive figure. For a band that does so little to coddle its audience—from its retina-scorching strobes to its searing feedback to its overall aloof demeanor—The Dead Weather earned all the adulation it received on Tuesday night. Expect a similar outpouring of curious reverence at tonight’s sold-out show.