If the Black Keys said that they had invented the blues, their first five albums would support their claim. So would the kind of shows they used to turn in, captured with thundering accuracy on the 2005 DVD Live.
But the Black Keys have evolved. Their new album Attack & Release―out since April―ties the Keys’ mix of Iggy & the Stooges stomp and Mississippi hill country rumble to something more ambitious―an architecture of space, melody, and mystery that might alienate some of their fans. But now that the Keys have discovered dynamics, they’ve really got something cooking.
Not that their old recipe was bad. In fact, it was damn good―a visceral, raw-boned sound that merged urban decay with backwoods primitivism. When guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney burst out of Akron, Ohio with their 2002 debut The Big Come Up, they’d crafted a howl that mixed the influence of the contemporary rural electric bluesmen Junior Kimbrough, R.L. Burnside, and T-Model Ford―all staples of the grungy Fat Possum label―with the big noise and rabid energy of punk rock. Carney’s heavy but rickety drumming sounded like a hyperactive version of the thump put down by Ford’s notorious sidekick Spam, and Auerbach’s guitar seemed to make a trainload of references, from Rust Never Sleeps-era Neil Young to Johnny Ramone―all of them dirty. To peg the filth meter, the band recorded itself with funky mikes and a tape machine in an old factory building with no isolation and with no respect for conventions like avoiding amplifier hiss.
In comparison, their rough-as-gravel debut for Fat Possum, 2003’s Thickfreakness, was glassy smooth. They balanced the blues-rock bellyache of the garage classic “Have Love Will Travel” with an explosive nod to Junior Kimbrough (“Everywhere I Go”) and their own gut-bucket flash fires like the title track.
Although their recording modus operandi was essentially the same, the guitars had more punchy threat and Auerbach’s vocals moaned just right enough to make them darlings of college radio and the alt-blues-punk-roots tribe. Add airplay to a reputation for death defying live shows―loud, earnest, rippling with energy―and the Cult of the Black Keys grew. Their followers swelled in number during the release of their Fat Possum follow-ups Rubber Factory―a title that nods to the deserted Akron edifice where it was recorded―and the tribute EP Chulahoma: the Songs of Junior Kimbrough.
Die-hard fans of Kimbrough, however, noted that regardless of the Keys’ good intentions they most often stripped the Kimbrough tunes they covered of their hypnotic intensity. Like their live shows, the disc bared the Black Keys’ weaknesses: a lack of dynamics that sometimes turned their performances into monochromatic volume-fests.
The Black Keys began to best those demons with their major label debut Magic Potion in 2006. Tunes like the slide packing “Black Door” and the single “Your Touch” (see video below) gave Auerbach more room to sing, tightening up the guitar phrasing and more clearly defining Carney’s beat. But it was a step backwards, too, in that refining and simplifying the Keys’ grungy stew made it taste too much like plain old-school Southern-rock boogie, rather than the sweet and sour gumbo it had been.
Attack & Release recaptures the band’s old flavor while offering up an entire rack full of spicy new tricks. That’s because there’s a new chef in the kitchen: the freewheeling Danger Mouse. As half of Gnarls Barkley, a solo artist, and a producer/mixer whose résumé includes Beck, Jay-Z, Verve, and Gorillaz, Danger Mouse’s wide embrace of styles from ’60s soul and psychedelia to cutting edge hip-hop makes him a potent studio personality.
Perhaps some fans of the Black Keys’ earlier albums will find his influence too potent. At times Attack & Release barely features Auerbach’s guitar playing, which is historically the duo’s strong card. Keyboards dominate “Oceans & Streams” and there’s a Jethro Tull-like flute melody on “Same Old Thing.”
Nonetheless, Attack & Release is an excellent album. Danger Mouse has created the ambience that’s been missing on the Black Keys’ past albums―that sense of space and place that balances microphone technique, room size, effects, and other factors to allow music to breath and sound alive.
When “I Got Mine” opens up into a vocal choir wordlessly cooing and Auerbach picking out a slow ’n’ spacey solo, these sounds have a psychedelic impact. As tunes like “Strange Times” show (see video below), Carney is still an inelegant drummer, but the Keys don’t need drumming with good taste; they need drumming that tastes good.
The jury’s out on whether the Black Keys’ newfound mastery of time and space on Attack & Release will translate to their stage shows―or just how much they’ll allow it to affect the joy they seem to take in rocking full-throttle.