Jackson sales taper, make way for Daughtry, Dead Weather

It took an "Idol" to supplant an icon. Michael Jackson has posthumously had the top-selling album in the U.S. for the last three weeks, but the honor this week belongs to Daughtry. The act's second effort, "Leave This Town," sold 269,000 copies in the U.S., according to Nielsen SoundScan, placing it at No. 1 on the U.S. pop charts.

Jackson's sales are not reflected on the Billboard Top 200, as they are eligible only for the catalog chart. The artist's hits collection "Number Ones" added another 192,000 to its sales total this week. But that's down significantly from the 349,000 copies it moved last week, hinting that Jackson's sales momentum may be slowing -- at least until concert promoter AEG releases a tribute film. All told, 647,000 Jackson albums were sold this week, down from the 1.1 million last week.

Daughtry, led by "American Idol" contestant Chris Daughtry, earns its second No. 1 album. Billboard informs us that Daughtry's self-titled 2006 debut landed a bit higher, opening with 304,000 copies sold. Yet the latter's sales were no doubt helped by the album being released during the start of the holiday season.

A breakdown of some other notables on this week's chart:

-- Bluesy supergroup of sorts the Dead Weather lands at No. 6 with "Horehound," an album the Times awarded four stars. A collaboration among Jack White, the Kills' singer Alison Mosshart, Raconteurs bassist Jack Lawrence and Queens of the Stone Age guitarist Dean Fertita, "Horehound" sold 51,000 copies. The band, who appeared on "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon" last week, are still a ways away from White Stripes-like numbers. The group's 2007 effort "Icky Thump" opened at No. 2 after selling 223,000 copies.

White Stripes documentary coming this fall

While Jack White is running the road in support of his latest indie supergroup the Dead Weather, it was announced Tuesday that the band that originally catapulted him to fame, the White Stripes, will release a concert documentary in the fall.

Entitled “Under Great White Northern Lights,” the film follows the duo across Canada, where they went out of their way to play unconventional venues such as a city bus and a bowling alley (shades of the band’s long and storied history at the bowling alley-boasting Majestic Theater in their hometown of Detroit).

Directed by Emmett Malloy, "Under Great White Northern Lights" debuts at the Toronto Film Festival on Sept. 19. While there are no scheduled American screenings yet, the trailer and stills from the movie can be seen here.

White also appears in the guitar documentary "It Might Get Loud" with the Edge and Jimmy Page.

-- Scott T. Sterling

Credit: Dana Edelson / NBC

Album review: The Dead Weather's 'Horehound'

There are precious few bands, especially those operating in the sonically weighty end of the musical spectrum, that demonstrate any appreciation for the notion that the notes you play may be less important than those you don't.

The Dead Weather, Jack White's latest project -- a collaboration with the Kills’ singer Alison Mosshart, Queens of the Stone Age guitarist Dean Fertita and Raconteurs bassist Jack Lawrence -- embraces that philosophy with bone-chilling power on "Horehound," the band’s take-no-prisoners debut.

Mosshart brings a wildcat's ferocity to her vocals; she's a fearsome adversary to all those high-pitched metal wailers. White, leaving the guitar work predominantly to Fertita, takes up his seat at the drums to drive this machine in tandem with Lawrence's titanic bass lines. Beefy riffs, upended beats and blues-rooted atmospherics are dolloped on sparingly, until it's time to explode with a solo.

"I like to grab you by the hair / And drag you to the devil" Mosshart snarls in "Hang You From the Heavens," which she wrote with Fertita. "Stand up like a man," she warns in the quartet-composed "Treat Me Like Your Mother," "You better learn to shake hands / And treat me like your mother."

In White's "Cut Like a Buffalo," his lead vocal, one of just two on this outing, is accompanied by the convulsive sounds of Mosshart's gurgles as he cries, "Is that you choking / Or are you just joking?" There's no joke here -- just mountains of chest-rattling primal rock designed to reassert the elemental power of the four-piece rock group. Mission accomplished.

-- Randy Lewis

The Dead Weather
"Horehound"
Third Man
Four stars

Live: The Dead Weather at the Roxy

With an electric Alison Mosshart out front and Jack White on drums, it's a sideways storm.

Alison Mosshart's lips nearly grazed Jack White's when the pair shared a microphone Wednesday night at the Roxy. The room grew more humid during that encounter, though the singers never touched. Later, when White took one of his showy guitar solos, Mosshart simply stood and stared. Did her locked gaze signify adoration? Or was it hostile -- a silent way of shouting, "Get out of my spotlight"?

In the Dead Weather, the group that unites Mosshart with White, along with guitarist-keyboardist Dean Fertita and bassist Jack Lawrence (who also play with White in the Raconteurs), the foundations of the four-piece rock band are shaken loose just enough to let some interesting complexities surface. The band's sound is firmly rooted in heavy blues-rock, but the presence of Mosshart up front and White mostly behind the drums turns this revival on its side, if not completely upside down.

Mosshart, a member of the drone-rock duo the Kills, is a riveting frontwoman whose erotic power isn't attached to feminine clichés. Singing lead for most of the Dead Weather's hour-and-change set, she was in constant flux: shaking her slender hips and knotty black hair, leaning perilously into the crowd, dancing in a seeming stupor one moment and coiling to leap the next.

Her vocals went from a sultry murmur to a scary growl, evoking forebears such as Grace Slick and Polly Jean Harvey but never settling into mere imitation. They weren't gospel-strong; Mosshart found power in innuendo and seductiveness, as well as by daring to be ugly. Often, her voice mingled with White's high wails in a fashion that could fairly be described as familial.

Dead Weather: Jack White's newest stripe

His new band, Dead Weather, plays a 20-minute set, sounding a lot like a stripped-down version of the White Stripes.

Reporting from Nashville -- Jack White took the wraps off his new band here Wednesday night, launching phase three of his ever-evolving career with a 20-minute live performance by Dead Weather, fronted by the Kills singer Alison Mosshart, at the site of his new Third Man Records headquarters.

The private show, attended by about 150 invitees, took place in the downtown building that houses not only the label's offices but a performance space, a record store specializing in vinyl, a photo studio and a darkroom.

White, playing drums and singing with Mosshart, is joined in the new group by two of his Raconteurs bandmates, guitarist Dean Fertita (also from Queens of the Stone Age) and bassist Jack Lawrence.

During the four-song set, Mosshart writhed at the mike while Fertita and Lawrence provided the heavy blues-rock groove on sibling white single-cutaway Gretsch hollow body guitar and bass. Mosshart joined them with a matching white Bo Diddley cigar box guitar for "So Far From Your Weapon."

White took his place at the drums, the instrument on which he first learned to play music. He came out from behind his kit just once, duetting at the mike with Mosshart on "Weapon."

The band's debut album, "Horehound," is due in June, and the first single will be "Hang You From the Heavens," which Third Man is issuing on a 7-inch vinyl single as well as making it available for download.

Read more Dead Weather: Jack White's newest stripe

Photo: Jack White, right, with his new band, the Dead Weather. From left, Alison Mosshart, Jack Lawrence and Dean Fertita. Credit: Christopher Berkey / For The Times