Jack White had every right to brag during the Dead Weather's set Wednesday night at First Avenue -- if that's what he was doing -- when he coyly introduced the slow-stewing rocker "So Far From Your Weapon."
"This is a song from our first album, recorded so many years ago," the modern-day rock god coyly told the sold-out crowd.
His smugness stemmed from the fact that the Dead Weather's debut record only just came out last summer. The dark-edged, danger-toting all-star fuzz-rock quartet was returning in support of its second disc, "Sea of Cowards," issued in May. What a difference just a year can make, though.
White's second band since the hiatus of his now-legendary White Stripes, the Dead Weather was powerful and even arousing when it played First Ave last year in support of its debut. However, last year's show felt a little staged and forced at times, as if the band tried too hard to recreate the fireworks it set off that first wild night it got together on a hunch and a bottle of booze.
Wednesday's show felt like it really was that night again. Rounded out by vocalist Alison Mosshart (from the blues-punk duo the Kills), guitarist/keyboardist Dean Fertita (of Queens of the Stone Age) and bassist Jack Lawrence (of the Raconteurs, White's other band), the Dead Weather showed an intensity and a chemistry as tangible and unignorable as the black paint on the First Ave walls.
As at last summer's show, White mostly stuck to playing drums during the 90-minute set, banging on them with the kind of raw power that he brings to the guitar. We get it, Jack: You're a superbeing who can master just about any instrument you pick up. Cheers rose out of the crowd the one and only time he sang lead vocals and when he finally picked up a guitar right before the encore.
Still, White's immobility was hardly a letdown. For starters, Fertita is a pretty monstrous guitarist himself. Also, Mosshart howls and bellows and stalks the stage with the same kind of rabid ferocity White applied to his Stripes.
The maddest, most maniacal tunes were the bombastic remake of Bob Dylan's "New Pony" and the frazzled encore highlight "Jawbreaker." When the band locked arms and bowed at the end of the encore, it was a weirdly sweet gesture to a show that was anything but. Suffice it to say the bow had a braggart air about it, too.
