Filed under: album, review, video | Tags: 2009, alison mosshart, chris catchpole, jack white, music, the dead weather, the kills, the raconteurs, the white stripes
The Dead Weather
Horehound •
Columbia / Third Man
Gone are the days when the term ‘supergroup’ was remotely meaningful and applied to such goldmines of talent as Crosby, Stills & Nash or Emerson, Lake & Palmer. It seems that this hugely subjective label is now increasingly applied to almost all collectives formed of relatively famous band members on their day, month or year off. The latest and most lauded in quite some time are The Dead Weather, who pitch their circus tent and climb the highwire of hype with a band formed out of a Raconteurs gig gone wrong. You will probably have heard the story already, but in case you haven’t, a redux: Jack White lost his voice and Alison Mosshart of The Kills stepped up to fill in on the mic; out of this sprang the idea for The Dead Weather in which Ms Mosshart assumes the role of frontwoman while White ditches the guitar and takes rather successfully to the drums. Enter fellow Ractonteur Jack Lawrence and Dean Fertita of Queens Of The Stone Age on bass and guitar respectively, and a new musical entity was born. The band have a clear agenda on this provocatively titled debut: Horehound is about bluesy rock of the fuzzy and distorted variety. This is no bad thing in itself, but sadly what unfolds is an album of less than memorable toe-tappers that rarely hit the authentic intensity associated with the best of the genre.
Filed under: news, trouser press | Tags: 2009, alan pedder, alison mosshart, jack white, music, the dead weather, the kills, the white stripes
Forms new band with White Stripes’ Jack
While bandmate Jamie Hince has been cosying up with model Kate Moss, Kills singer Alison Mosshart has been busy in the studio recording the debut album for her new band The Dead Weather, which sees her team up with Jack White and his fellow Raconteurs, Jack Lawrence and Dean Fertita. The recently wrapped album has been titled Horehound and will get a June release through White’s own label Third Man Records, based in Nashville.
Mosshart does the lion’s share of vocal duties while White mans the drums. Their debut single ‘Hang You From The Heavens’ is already available on iTunes. The B-side is a reverb-soaked cover of Gary Numan’s ‘Are Friends Electric?’. You can listen to them both on the band’s official website.
Filed under: news, trouser shorts, video | Tags: 2008, alanis morissette, alicia keys, clyde petersen, deerhoof, free MP3, imani coppola, jack white, james bond, kate miller-heidke, little jackie, missy higgins, music, news, quantum of solace, your heart breaks
Proving yet again that you can’t put your arms around a memory but you can go back and alter your songs so that radio will play them, here’s the new Alanis Morissette video for break-up ballad ‘Not As We’. Alanis walks alone on a beach, overfills her bath, writes in her journal and drinks coffee earnestly. You’ll probably want to give her a hug.
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Directed by Clyde Petersen, frontwoman of Seattle-based collective Your Heart Breaks, here’s the new video from Deerhoof, ‘Chandelier Spotlight’, taken from their new album Offend Maggie, out this week. Like it? Then download the song for free here. Sorted.
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We love Imani Coppola here at Wears The Trousers. Always have, always will. Okay, so her new project Little Jackie doesn’t quite scale the heights of brilliance like last year’s The Black & White Album or her enduring debut Chupacabra, but it’s nice to see her burning up the charts after paying her dues for all these years. The next Little Jackie single will be the title track of their debut album The Stoop, but the video for it has been taken down from YouTube. Rats. Instead, here’s Imani and Adam’s recent appearance on ‘Later…with Jools Holland’.
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This isn’t as good as we’d hoped. Oh well. It’s still better than this. And a vast improvement on this. Best post-millennial Bond theme in the bag then.
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other videos we’ve been watching this week (Australian edition):
a new promo (the second) for the brilliant ‘Where I Stood’ by Aussie singer-songwriter Missy Higgins
‘Can’t Shake It’, the first single from wacky Aussie Kate Miller-Heidke’s new album Curiouser. “I execute the moonwalk like I stepped in shit”? Now that’s what we call a lyric.
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Alan Pedder
Filed under: news, trouser press | Tags: alan pedder, alicia keys, amy winehouse, drowned in sound, duffy, jack white, james bond, jessica simpson, lindsay lohan, liz phair, mercury music prize, MIA, music, news, nightwish, on!air!library!, paris hilton, pj harvey, portishead, quantum of solace, saint etienne, sam sparro, sarah cracknell, school of seven bells, tarja turunen, xenomania
– Liz Phair comes in from the cold
– Saint Etienne announce new single and compilation
– illegal downloads backed by Duffy
– Bond theme suspense heats up with new rumour
– vote in Drowned In Sound’s alternative Mercury Music Prize
– debut album on the way from School Of Seven Bells
– Finnish metallers Nightwish line up rarities
– Hilton, Lohan and Simpson get up to stuff
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After years spent in a glossed up anti-wilderness, Liz Phair has finally thrown her old fans a bone with news that her next album will see a return to “sloppiness”. Speaking to Billboard, Phair was quick to point out that she’s not making a new Exile In Guyville, her classic 1993 debut, but is fighting to keep some sort of edge to the songs. “The best way I can describe it is ‘natural’,” she says. “It has mistakes in it. It has layered background vocals of mine that just make an overall slop, but it’s perfect slop.”
Phair has already reissued Exile In Guyville in the US through new label ATO after leaving Capitol earlier this year, and has been playing a small series of gigs in which she plays the album in its entirety. The reissue, complete with three bonus tracks and a DVD, comes to the UK on August 25th (although you can currently get the bonus tracks through various digital download services).
wears the trousers magazine 