NOT TO BE MISTAKEN FOR THE WHITE STRIPES

MANCHESTER, Tenn. - Deadboy and the Elephantmen must have gotten sick of being compared to the White Stripes. They're not a male-female guitar-drums duo any more; at Bonnaroo on Sunday afternoon, they were a trio, with a bass player. It hasn't made their music any less stark or single-minded.

Dax Riggs still writes blunt, basic songs--dirges, blues, two-chord stomps, power-chorded hard rock--with the drums and bass in lockstep with his guitar. The lyrics are, by and large, about death, with sidelines in blood, violence and final judgment. He's after something primal, the clear-eyed acceptance of mortality found in old blues and folk songs (and in a Pixies song he borrows, "Wave of Mutilation"). And when he leaps from full-throated hard-rock singing to falsetto howl, he captures it.