Seattle Subsonic

The Thrill Ain't Gone Nowhere

May 9th, 2010

The Black Keys have returned from some unexpected side projects with a winner. I’ve had a copy of Brothers for a few weeks and in typical new ‘Keys record fashion, it’s been in heavy rotation.
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There are a few remarkable influences in this record, and as fate would have it, I am grateful to have been well-prepared for my first listen of Brothers after a long spell of Otis Redding and Sam Cooke tunes in the past months. Because I think this record might strike you as “different” or “a departure”, I am going to suggest a few more artists to consider as prerequisite before getting the most out of this record: B.B. King, Aretha Franklin, WAR, The Spinners, and if someone ho you’ve missed it,  Muddy Waters‘ Electric Mud.
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I’ll also contend that you’d be missing part of the progression of the band if you haven’t played Attack & Release (2008), guitairist Dan Auerbach’s solo record Keep It Hid (2009) and the Blakrok collaboration record, also from last year. Brothers, like Attack & Release,  is again produced by Danger Mouse. Knowing that, you may detect a different sound right off the bat with “Everlasting Light” but if not, you’ll might catch the ghost of Gnarls Barkley by the time you’re listening to “Too Afraid to Love You”. Be it the producer’s influence alone or otherwise, this record crams more sound, and more new sounds into it. There are far more layers of guitars, especially effective on “Unknown Brother” and “The Only One” with new rich acoustic guitar tracks in the rhythm section of the former song, and the keys on the latter. Lessons in funk and rhythm – honed, distilled, and exploited to create the entire Blakrok experience – are mobilized again for “Sinister Kid” (perhaps written after hearing WAR’s “Lowrider” on a jukebox one night?) and also in the fuzzed out bass groove of “Next Girl”, a song any Band of Gypsys fan can instantly appreciate. Even Dan’s voice gets “effected” – in the opener, “Everlasting Light” and most notably in “Never Give You Up”, some studio magic takes us back to a golden age of Motown. It’s very unexpected, but successful in its devotion to their signature “mid-fi” sound.
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This record is going to pay dividends to those that have been listening from the beginning. It’s a jump from Rubber Factory and Thickfreakness, which were bare-bones, (mostly) two instrument stomps that was faithfully recreated in their packed live shows, but it follows on logically from A&R, Keep It Hid and Blakrok. While this album sounds great cranked up to 11 in the house, on might think it will be quite a different Keys show if more than two people are on stage come October. For this reason I am reminded that a Brothers tour does not mean “playing the album front to back” with an encore of “Grown So Ugly” and “Till I Get My Way.” In the shows I have seen in past, the band masterfully produces the essence of their songs, foregoing rhythm guitarists, programmers, backup singers and bassists. I’m optimistic that the boys will create another facemelter of a show from their ever-expanding catalog of songs.
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It was overheard this week that “if i had just heard this as their first record, i wouldn’t buy another”. I see it from a different angle – I don’t want Pat and Dan to produce The Big Come Up nor Rubber Factory again. What would the 60s have been Help! and A Hard Day’s Night represented the breadth of the Beatles? A decade of The Black Keys ought to take you new places, and Brothers surely does.
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The Black Keys play the Paramount on Friday October 2. Presale tickets just became available through their website.