Concert recap: The Dead Weather at The Pearl

By Deanna Rilling

Monday, April 19, 2010 | 3:52 p.m.

Baby Ruthless is lankily brooding around, cigarette in hand, disheveled raven hair hanging in her eyes. She wears the same tight black pants and leopard-print button-down shirt she's worn many nights before. The dim backlighting occasionally reveals a wild sparkle in her eyes as she spastically moves like a fiending junkie. Baby Ruthless is a true rocker; the stuff legends and biographical motion pictures are made of.

Granted, Baby Ruthless is the alter ego of Alison Mosshart when she performs with The Dead Weather. The singer/guitarist seems to channel the great rock goddesses who came before — Joplin, Slick, Harry, Jett — but with her own spin and gritty, imperfect yet honest vocals.

Mosshart (also of The Kills and, before that, Discount) is joined by a barrage of disgustingly talented musicians that make you kick yourself for not sticking with piano lessons as a youth. Jack White (The White Stripes, The Raconteurs) joins Mosshart and primarily handles drum duties live, fellow Raconteur Jack Lawrence handles the bass and Queens of the Stone Age's Dean Fertita has a mastery of damn near everything else including guitars, keyboards and organs.

Just around 9:15 p.m. Sunday night after an opening set by The Ettes, the quartet launched into "60 Feet Tall." The scene was moody and intriguing and the live video feed at The Pearl was displayed only in black and white on the two screens bookending the stage. Between the music and setup, it could have been a scene plucked from a late 1960s NYC or San Francisco that people recount nostalgically for years to come in important-moments-in-rock documentaries.

"All right, all right Las Vegas. How do you do?" asked White a few songs in. "I fired a Thompson machine gun today," he smiled in reference to the gun ranges in Sin City where you can shoot almost any weapon one has seen on television (or in a Dead Weather video). "Baby Ruthless — it's her first time in Las Vegas," White remarked. "It won't be the last."

We hope it won't be the band's last because The Pearl appeared to be only half full and the entire upper balcony section was not in use. Maybe they'll forgive our city this time; it's likely the sparse attendance was due to the show coinciding with Coachella in Indio, Calif., where a large number of music fans migrated for the weekend and possibly caught The Dead Weather's set the previous night. This crowd, however, was relatively tame, save for a group of air guitarists front and center in the lower mezzanine and a lone air drummer in section 101. But the band seemed unaffected as they jammed through their set, rotated instruments and at times crooned through a few vintage-looking mics.

White stepped up from behind the drum kit and took the lead vocals on "You Just Can't Win," a Them/Van Morrison cover. Mid song, he returned to the drums and continued singing while Mosshart and tambourine gave Stevie Nicks a run for her money. If White hadn't impressed fans enough with his two previous musical ventures and guitar prowess, his drumming was equally notable and made one wonder why he ever let Meg White near a tom.

The main set concluded with White and Baby Ruthless sharing a mic and leaving no room for Jesus on the duet "Will There Be Enough Water?" The intensity and energy between the two so immersed in the song made one wonder if Fertita and Lawrence — or even the audience for that matter — felt like they were intruding on a personal moment. But the best part about the performance was the band's raw connectedness with the material.

The band concluded the show after barely an hour, but the reserved crowd finally gave The Dead Weather the hollering it deserved and the group returned to the stage for three more songs, including "Treat Me Like Your Mother" (which has recently been remixed by Palms Rain Nightclub resident Z-Trip).

A mixture of tracks from their first album, Horehound, their forthcoming May 11 release, Sea of Cowards plus perfectly selected covers made up the evening's impressive set. The Dead Weather's brand of intense, bluesy, psychedelic rock maintained a timeless feel as the quartet took a group bow, left the stage and the guitar reverb faded out.