the dead weather

We pulled together some of the best supergroups across rock, punk, and metal, from boygenius and L.S. Dunes to Transplants and the Damned Things.

Two U.K. televisual musical moments from the turn of the century, both involving stripped-down young rock ‘n’ roll bands: First up, the White Stripes on long-standing U.K. pop showcase Top Of The Pops, in February 2002. “Fell In Love With A Girl” began its chart-shaking international climb, and Jack and Meg White entered English living […]

“Joan Jett doesn’t play rock ’n’ roll,” I wrote two years back, reviewing her SXSW showcase for The Austin Chronicle. “She is rock ’n’ roll.” It’s true. The individual born Joan Marie Larkin in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, embodies the music and spirit better than anyone this side of Keith Richards. As Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong […]

Side projects have the special ability to give artists the chance to express themselves in whatever manner they choose without snobby genre lords or the (sometimes self-imposed) shackles of their previous works confining their sonic decisions. Sometimes these new bands go in an intentionally more mainstream direction, while other times the word “commercial” is never […]

Jack White Lazaretto Jack White is not the bantam rooster prince of the deconstructed blues. Hasn’t been for a while. These days, White is a distillation of Tom Waits’ Luddite-approved technology and a middle-aged science teacher who enjoys freaking out his bored students, all wrapped up in the body of a 21st century, hard-rockin’ dandy well-versed […]

Cage The Elephant Melophobia There’s a lot happening on Melophobia, the third album by Kentucky rock band Cage The Elephant. The five members spent time separately concocting their own ideas for the album after a lengthy period of time together on the road. The resulting album is, at its best, ambitious and teeming with ideas […]

Jack White has been outed by the Detroit Free Press as the anonymous donor who paid $142,000 in back taxes in order to save the city's historic Masonic Temple from foreclosure. Opened in 1926, The Masonic, which takes up an entire city block, has hosted legendary musical acts such as The Rolling Stones, The Who, MC5, and […]

Jack White Blunderbuss Since the White Stripes stopped taking thorny, deconstructed blues to the bank (thereby cashing all of Jon Spencer, Jeffrey Evans and Matt Verta-Ray’s checks), Jack White has dipped his muse into various idioms like he was doing laundry by the side of the river and letting it dry on the rocks. Whether […]