![]() ![]() No matter that it took five years to get it done. It’s a call to action, a cautionary tale, a breakdown that leads to breakthrough, and mostly a record that was itching to be made. The disembodied, swampy chorus on “Tell Me Lies” the eccentric “Walk Across Water,” which rivals the lyricism of Prince’s “I Wanna Be Your Lover” or Hendrix’s “The Wind Cries Mary” the raw prickly threat of “Under the Gun,” recalling great underground rock bands like Question Mark & the Mysterians, Paul Revere & the Raiders, the 13th Floor Elevators, and, especially, Cleveland, Ohio’s James Gang-they all make you realize this isn’t music for the faint of heart. You can hear it from the first unhinged yowl that opens up “Lo/Hi,” a fretful portent about the claustrophobic dangers of modern isolation, sets a formidable pace. “Now we’re basically like a prison shank turned into a ginsu blade,” laughs Auerbach. 1–they earned 10 Grammy nominations, four Grammys and four multi-platinum records, they haven’t changed that sharply honed Midwestern edge. 3, then 2011’s El Camino went straight to No. Or maybe just a little relief from suburban boredom.Īfter the nuanced, pensive psychedelic melancholy of 2014’s Turn Blue, perhaps the biggest factor in the sound of “Let’s Rock” was that Auerbach and Carney fell back in love with the electric guitar co-producing an unpretentious blues worshipping assault record that reminds you that rock is supposed to be unpredictable, dangerous, and in your face.īut despite all of the Black Keys’ success over the 20 years they’ve been together–each of their albums surpassing the next: 2010’s Brothers debuted at No. Inspired by the fiery eccentric guitar of his hero, urged along by Patrick Carney’s impatient intuitive stutter drumming, the duo have turned out what is perhaps their best work, minimalist and no frills in its execution, they’ve created the kind of insistent sounds that makes you want to drive over the speed limit on the Innerbelt as you roll out of town in your Road Dominator in search of big adventure. “It was the perfect thing to get me into this record.” I made that religious record with Glenn and Joe and I literally went to church, and made the Black Keys record right after.” Explains Auerbach. But I can say doing that session with Glenn and Joe primed me for doing a Black Keys record. It’s this weird Midwestern rock and roll thing and how this rock and roll is got in my blood. Before that I didn’t realize how much I’ve been informed by Glenn when we made the earlier Black Keys records. “Joe and I spent a few days in the studio playing Glenn’s songs, all his All Saved Freak Band songs from 19. So much so, that before Schwartz’s death in November 2018, Auerbach along with Joe Walsh, recorded with Schwartz. That was how I got turned on to crazy ass, weird ass rock and roll when I was a kid. Glenn Schwartz was our own religious version of Link Wray. “You see the Dan Auerbach who saw Link Wray when he was eighteen, and who went and saw Glenn Schwartz every week at Hooples. “What version of me do you see on this record?” singer, guitarist Dan Auerbach asks rhetorically from Easy Eye Sound Studio. On their ninth album “Let’s Rock” the city of Akron is a silent partner, a third member on a recording that returns the duo to the straightforward, primitivism of their early canon, back to those days when Carney worshipped the Stooges, and Auerbach was enamored with Link Wray and the original James Gang guitarist Glenn Schwartz. ![]() Ten years after they pulled up their stakes and moved south to Nashville, leaving their gritty post-industrial hometown of Akron, Ohio, the birth place of rubber companies, waffle cones, oatmeal, and LeBron James Patrick Carney and Dan Auerbach are back, at least metaphorically. ![]()
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