It's entirely possible that when Jack White allegedly threatened to beat up Black Keys drummer Patrick Carney in a New York City bar earlier this month he was doing some street-team marketing for the new Dead Weather record. Because whenever White steps behind the drum kit of this scuzz-rock supergroup, he hits with a crazed intensity that suggests he’s looking to pound a different sort of skin. Since the release of the band’s previous album, 2010’s Sea of Cowards, White has embarked on a solo career that’s seen his work turn both more intimate and extravagant; in this light, the Dead Weather have come to represent the hanging side of beef on which he can unleash his pent-up aggression.
Tellingly, White and his mates—Kills vocalist Alison Mosshart, City and Colour bassist Jack Lawrence, and Queens of the Stone Age guitarst/keyboardist Dean Fertita—have announced they have no plans to tour in support of Dodge and Burn. This news would reinforce the notion that this group essentially functions as an exorcism of its members’ most feral tendencies before they return to their day jobs. Theirs is a blues defined not by chord progressions but physical reactions, embodying the music’s storied tradition of howls and moans and demonic possession into a fierce, physical sound. There’s a restlessness to Dodge and Burn, from Mosshart’s seething vocals and Fertita’s spasmodic guitar solos to Lawrence’s corroded basslines to White’s abrupt breakdowns. Even when songs are built around a shopworn sentiment, they’re given a twist: on the opening "I Feel Love", Mosshart answers the song’s titular declaration with a withering "every once in a while."
The Dead Weather’s cabin-in-the-woods creepiness can verge on the contrived—like on "Three Dollar Hat", where White makes like a young Isaac Brock taking on Nick Cave’s "Stagger Lee", and losing. But the band’s theatricality mostly complements the agitated tone of the songs and the dubby, dread-of-night ambiance of White’s production, particularly in those moments when Mosshart and White go head-to-head. The mid-album knockout "Rough Detective" sees the two trading verses and pushing one another to hysterical extremes; instead of dropping the typical guitar solo after the second shout-it-out chorus, the song yields a carnival-like melee of chopped-up chatter and pitch-shifted squeals. And when White asks, "what’s happening?", he sounds genuinely spooked by the song’s sudden descent into madness.
Like its predecessors, Dodge and Burn can leave you wishing for more interaction between the two leads—the duets are always the highlight of any given Dead Weather record, the moment when all that simmering tension boils over. But Mosshart once again handles the heavy vocal lifting with menace to spare, be it the frisky sing-speak of "Mile Markers", the predatory soul stomp of "Let Me Through", or the violent mood swings of "Open Up", which upends its desolate opening verse with a riff straight off an early Rush record. And given her commitment to staying in character, it’s doubly strange how, in the album’s dying minutes, the Dead Weather completely abandon their monochromatic schematic.
Dodge and Burn is capped by the ill-fitting "Impossible Winner", a sensitive piano ballad that’s practically Oasis-like in its orchestral ascent (and which, in light of the equally stately "The Last Goodbye" from the last Kills record, prods Mosshart further toward her destiny as a torch-song chanteuse). It’d be one thing if there was anything else on this record—or in the band’s entire discography, for that matter—that showed the Dead Weather had any interest in opening up their airtight rock-noir aesthetic. But tacked onto the end of another dependably dank Dead Weather record, the song feels less like a graceful break-of-dawn denouement than the musical equivalent of being awakened in the middle of the night by a flashlight to the face.
