Know your supergroup: Why Jack White isn't The Dead Weather's only attraction

The image-conscious Jack White might bristle at the notion, but like it or not, he will likely be the focal point for many audience members giving his new supergroup  The Dead Weather a shot tonight or Wednesday night at the Vic in Chicago. But while White's pedigree has been fully bathed in the spotlight since the beginning of the decade thanks to his faux brother-sister duo The White Stripes, that doesn't mean his bandmates aren't just as worthy of the sudden attention. The band only dates back to March, and its just-released debut, Horehound, is still warm on store shelves—so it might take fans a while to learn that this is a side project for those other three people, too, and not some random lucky break. To help speed that process along, The A.V. Club offers you this handy look of who brings what to The Dead Weather table.

Jack White
Duties: Drums, vocals, guitar
Other bands/collaborations: The Go, The Upholsterers, The White Stripes, The Raconteurs
How that informs Dead Weather: The Upholsterers were not ironically named: White used to be an upholsterer in Detroit during the '90s while playing in bands, and that hands-on work ethic has always permeated his music. In The White Stripes, that translated into setting arbitrary limitations on the group and even a dress code: Meg White laid down minimalist beats while Jack played simple but effective blues-punk chords and spat lyrics that could be innocent or vengeful, but always seemed honest. And although Jack and Meg eventually broke their rule on avoiding solos, their music eventually became relatively more complex, incorporating other instruments like marimba and piano.

While Jack always called the shots in The White Stripes, The Dead Weather is clearly a democracy: All but three of Horehound's 11 songs were co-written by two or more of the four members. And yet White's fingerprints are all over the band's aesthetic and sound. The White Stripes might not have ever been quite this sludgy or dense-sounding, but it's safe to assume the band's overall defiant vibe and swagger was crafted in no small part by White, and intensified by Alison Mosshart. The Raconteurs proved that White could share the spotlight and craft more powerful hooks with a full band; The Dead Weather shows that he can do all that through a sonic heap of sludge. There's still no explanation for what drives him to play in bands with the word "The" in them, though.

Alison Mosshart
Duties: Vocals, guitar, percussion
Other bands: Discount, The Kills
How that informs Dead Weather: After leaving behind Florida emo-punk band Discount, Mosshart reinvented herself as a smoky, slinky blues-rock singer in The Kills, a duo she formed with London guitarist Jamie Hince. On three albums, including last year's Midnight Boom, The Kills laid down an edgy, dirty-glam sound overtly influenced by noise-punks Royal Trux, with Mosshart's femme-fatale charisma giving life to lines like "I want you to be crazy, 'cause you're boring, baby, when you're straight." The eight songs she co-wrote for Horehound bring The Kills' catchy-beats-and-smoky-blues songwriting aesthetic to The Dead Weather, although that's not exactly unfamiliar territory for White either. Undeniably, though, Mosshart's sexy, dangerous swagger comes over from The Kills pretty much unchanged, adding a wild sneer to songs like "Treat Me Like Your Mother." 

Dean Fertita
Duties: guitar, bass, organ, backing vocals
Other bands/collaborations: Queens Of The Stone Age, The Raconteurs, The Waxwings
How that informs Dead Weather: Fertita is usually tagged as "the guy from Queens Of The Stone Age," although it’s rarely ever brought up that thus far he’s only ever toured as a keyboardist for the group, and has yet to actually record with them. (A new QOTSA album has been rumored for some time now, but with all its members off on new projects, who knows when that might actually happen?) Something dark—and kind of sludgy—does seem to have been seeping into Fertita’s musical consciousness as of late. His role as lead guitarist for The Dead Weather has turned him to heavy stoner-rock distortions and reverbed-out riffs, best heard on the two lead tracks “60 Feet Tall” and “Hang You From The Heavens,” which Fertita co-wrote. Maybe he picked up a guitar pedal or two from Queens’ Josh Homme—whatever the cause, it’s certainly a departure from the vintage rock sound of Fertita’s earlier band, The Waxwings. It’s as if he traded ‘60s pop for ‘60s psych, and not surprisingly both influences can be heard throughout the enamoring and dirty rock sounds of Horehound.

Jack Lawrence
Duties: Bass
Other bands/collaborations: The Greenhornes, The Raconteurs
How that informs Dead Weather: Arguably, Lawrence's primary gig is as the bass player in Ohio trio The Greenhornes, whose "There Is An End" was used as the theme song to Jim Jarmusch's Broken Flowers. But most music fans know him largely because he plays bass in Jack White's other side project, The Raconteurs. (He even got married at Jack White's house, in a double ceremony in May that also saw Meg White tie the knot.) The Greenhornes' '60s-influenced garage-rock is solid but generally gets nowhere near as experimental or flamboyant as the White Stripes or The Kills, and that also seems to describe Lawrence's place in The Dead Weather—which is just fine, since it's a valuable role to be the solid, unassuming guy in the band. Not everyone can be the star. Zeppo Marx played a role too, you know.