Tag: The Black Keys

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Bits: Happy Black Keys Day!, Alan Moore box set, Dio lost, Curtis remembered, Conrad Plymouth travels

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  • I’m tempted to make this an all-Black Keys Bits post, but I won’t. That being said, holy shit, the new album drops today and it is glorious. And they’re giving away a copy of the deluxe, limited-edition CD over at HearYa.

  • Comic book genius Alan Moore is in music news again as he collaborates with photographer Mitch Jenkins and a roster of musicians, including Mike Patton, on a box set that includes a story written by Moore, illustrated by Jenkins with an accompanying score on CD or vinyl.

  • Metal legend Ronnie James Dio lost his battle with cancer on Sunday, and today marks the 30th anniversary of the death of Joy Division’s Ian Curtis.

  • Our friends Conrad Plymouth give a brief glimpse of their journey to SXSW.

  • And back around to the Keys. In concert with the official release of Brothers is the premiere of the video for the lead single “Tighten Up”. The guys continue their fine video tradition of hilarity and violence. With no dinosaur puppets in sight.


The Black Keys “Tighten Up”
http://mediaservices.myspace.com/services/media/embed.aspx/m=104927443,t=1,mt=video
The Black Keys | MySpace Music Videos

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Obsess Much? : The Black Keys, All times are now

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I had already planned to obsess some more about the Black Keys, and specifically about how the biggest reason I love Dan Auerbach is because he is a music sponge, today when I learned that NPR Music had posted the new Black Keys album Brothers in their “First Listen” feature.

Let me just get this out of the way now: I am in love with this album. Every song hits me in a way that gets me excited. These 55 minutes of music go by far too fast.

(And if you put on your headphones and turn “Howlin’ For You” up loud enough, it sounds like the walls are coming down around you. Spectacular.)

Okay, now I’ll try to calm down enough to formulate coherent thought.

I’m going to start off by apologizing to Patrick Carney for excluding him so often when I talk about the music of the Black Keys. The Black Keys would not be the Black Keys without Carney – you can’t just Spinal Tap another drummer into his place. He is a monster of a hitter and one of the few drummers who makes me sit up and take notice (I may be nursing dreams about an Ohio supergroup with dual drummers: Carney and Sam Meister of mr. Gnome. I haven’t even thought about who else I’d put in that lineup because I can’t get past how mind-blowingly awesome it would be to have Carney and Meister together). But I think it’s safe to say that much of the Black Keys sound can be contributed to Auerbach.

It’s no secret that Auerbach is heavily influenced by the blues – especially the late Junior Kimbrough, the Black Keys’ Chulahoma album being a love letter to the man who set Auerbach on the path that took him to where he is today – and Brothers is drenched with soul. Both of these genres can feel like, and be treated as, relics, but they have never felt dated when filtered through Auerbach’s lens. One reason for this is that he is not precious about what he creates. The Keys are known for being quick and dirty about recording their albums, getting the heart that comes out of an unpolished, from-the-gut performance, resisting the temptation to slick things up to make them perfect (a move which can easily result in soulless noise), creating a base from which their music can change and evolve.

Another reason goes back to what I wrote earlier about Auerbach being a music sponge. Taking into consideration all the music the Black Keys have created, all the music they have produced for others and Auerbach’s solo work, it is obvious that Auerbach listens to everything, from all genres and all eras. And it seems that, where music is concerned for Auerbach, all times are now. Music created even before the dawn of recording is just as current as the most recent mp3 posted to the internet. For Auerbach, music is alive. All of it. Living and breathing just as strongly now as when the first beat was thumped out or the first string was plucked. The blood still flows, and Auerbach adds a few drops of his own red to this gushing stream.

NPR Music First Listen: The Black Keys, Brothers

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Bits: This Is Jim Jones, Sleigh Bells, Trent’s new joint, Liquid Swords II, Murder by Death & whiskey, litrock, Frank the Funkasaurus Rex wrecks ya

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If you have somehow missed the puppet dinosaur craze, please meet Frank the Funkasaurus Rex. Frank loves him some tits ‘n’ tubs, and we love Frank.

Addendum: So, that scroll across the bottom? Not a joke. TBK was seriously pissed about this video. Sorry, guys. Wish I had known before.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_PrT25o8Vs]

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Obsess Much? : The Black Keys, Magic Potion

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Obsess Much? is a new feature wherein I will do what I do best, the very thing that led me to start this blog in the first place: completely fixate on one artist/album/genre/enclave/whatever and talk on and on and on about it, sharing information and opinions with anyone in shouting distance, whether they like it or not.

You’re loving it already, right?

So whomever/whatever I’m obsessing on, whether a new artist or an act who has been around for a while or a band who aren’t even together anymore, I will share my enthusiasm in unnecessarily great detail.

Regular readers may have noticed that, since the Black Keys posted their new song “Tighten Up” from their forthcoming album Brothers on their MySpace page, I have been hardcore about all things coming from these two, sharp Akron boys. As an Ohioan who seems to be subconsciously drawn to acts from Ohio, I have been listening to and loving the Black Keys for a long time, but it is only with this current wave of fixation that I have nearly completed my Black Keys collection (Brothers is on pre-order in both the vinyl and deluxe CD editions, so I just have to obtain Feel Good Together, the album from Pat Carney’s side project, Drummer). The last album I picked up was Magic Potion.

I had gathered that MP was not a well-received album – at least not with critics – and I let that scare me off of picking it up for a while. Now that I have it and have listened to it repeatedly (approximately 15 times this past weekend – these guys have a knack for making music I want to listen to over and over immediately), I can’t say I understand why. It is hot. In terms of the music, it is the sexiest album they’ve made so far. Lyrically, it was the beginning of a personal rawness that continued on their next album, Attack and Release. “The Flame” may be the best song about being hurt again and again until one’s heart grows numb ever written.

Reading some of the lukewarm reviews from its release, I think the problem reviewers had with it was the classic “Oh no! It’s different from what they’ve done before!” issue because Magic Potion was the album where they began to evolve their sound beyond the blues, the sound that makes Attack and Release my favorite album of theirs so far. And, too, I think critics had a problem with the tempo of MP being slower – there aren’t as man foot-stompers as on the other albums, but I think the evidence within the songs (and backed up by the fact that Dan’s list of thank-yous in the liner notes do not, for the first time, include a certain female name that had been included on all previous albums) points to this being the result of the break-up of a long-term relationship. You’re just not going to make a big-rockin’ album when your years-long relationship has disintegrated.

Of course, there is also the problem that self-proclaimed music critics tend to focus on the wrong aspects of music and/or are dumb. Note this typically what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-you line from Pitchfork’s review: ‘There’s very little spark to early sequenced numbers “Your Touch”[…]’ I’m sorry, what? Are we thinking of the same song here, dude, because, I don’t know about anyone else, but that song has always eaten my head with its awesomocity. (The review also dismisses “Strange Desire” for rhyming “desire” with “fire”. This is not uncommon for a Pitchfork review, but it still amazes me when they pull out that kind of crap.)

So, Magic Potion: don’t believe the anti-hype.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBPGm4Fbo0Q]

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Rebirth of the Cool: Grown So Ugly

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Back to the blues we go for this installment of Rebirth of the Cool.

The story of Robert Pete Williams echoes the story of many of the great bluesmen: born in Louisiana in 1914, Williams grew up poor and uneducated. He was discovered in Angola prison, while serving time for killing a man, by a pair of ethnomusicologists who pressured the parole board for a pardon. He played the 1964 Newport Folk Festival alongside the likes of “re-discovered” greats like Skip James, Son House and others, heralding the height of the 1960s blues revival.

“Grown So Ugly” is probably Williams’ best-known song, thanks to the next two acts we’ll talk about. Williams had a percussive style of guitar-playing and his singing style could call up the grit of Howlin’ Wolf one moment and the haunting falsetto of Skip James the next.

http://www.lala.com/external/flash/SingleSongWidget.swf

In 1967, Captain Beefheart brought his Magic Band and his husky yelp to the song and turned it into a jazzy cry.

http://www.lala.com/external/flash/SingleSongWidget.swf

The version recorded by the Black Keys in 2004 is, essentially, a cover of a cover, taking their cues from the Beefheart rendition. The Keys, of course, add a lot of low end to the song, bringing out a darkness that can easily be overlooked in the original and the Beefheart version.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nThv8ZLWCLk]

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Slackday: And Ohio boys ain’t too bad, either

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As it’s Slackday, I’ll just drop the (very thin) veneer of objective professionalism and admit it: I am currently obsessed with all things Dan Auerbach. I’ve always dug the Black Keys, but the release of the new songs from their forthcoming album have compelled me to spend quality time with their catalogue and to get into Dan Auerbach’s solo work.

I learned that my favorite song on Dan Auerbach’s album, Keep It Hid, is a cover of a song that was written by Wayne Carson Thompson – who was also the writer of the fantastic song “The Letter” that was popularized by the Box Tops, sung by a very young Alex Chilton – and popularized by a duo called Jon & Robin. I had never heard the song, so I went looking for it. I was a little apprehensive that I might be faced with the fact that Dan didn’t conjure magic and awesome from thin air. But I needn’t have worried. As with A.A. Bondy, I’m finding I can always trust Dan.

You see, here’s the Jon & Robin version:

It’s cute, but after the promise of the intro, it feels limp and uninspiring.

Now, here’s what Dan did with it:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLsANH1tFoY]

Fucking. A.

He took the promising intro of the Jon & Robin version, stretched it throughout the song and even ratcheted it up a few notches. I absolutely love that big-stomping carnival rhythm. I love the drop-out echo effect when he sings “more”. And, as always, I love the soulfulness of his vocal delivery. This is what covering a song should be all about, taking it and making it your own – keeping the bones, but practically rebuilding the rest from the ground up. Dan took something that was cute and twee and made it fun, sexy and absolutely rockin’.

Dan Auerbach MySpace

Dan Auerbach page at Nonesuch

Dan Auerbach KCRW In-studio Session at Rollo & Grady

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Bits: Lolla’10, Yuri’s Night, Lou Barlow tour, TBK in NYC2, new Big Boi jam

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  • While we don’t post too many festival line-ups unless A.A. Bondy or the Felice Brothers are involved (we play favorites, we admit it), the Lollapalooza 2010 line-up is pretty great. Standouts for us: Jimmy Cliff, the Black Keys, Cypress Hill (we saw them on a previous Lolla go-’round, and they had one of the best sets of the day), Mavis Staples, Mumford & Sons, Dawes and Royal Bangs. It’ll be a something-for-everyone weekend.

  • If you’re in the San Francisco Bay Area, you should be getting tickets for Yuri’s Night at the NASA Ames Research Center this Saturday because the entertainment lineup is straight-up awesome. Les Claypool, The Black Keys, Common, N.E.R.D. and more. We ain’t got nothing like that going for the CLE celebration.

  • Lou Barlow will be touring with Mike Watt’s missingmen, though sans Watt, in June.

  • After the quick sell-out of the Black Keys’ upcoming Summerstage show, a second date has been added. Go get you some, NYC.

  • Pitchfork has a new Big Boi track, “Shutterbugg”, for you to listen to. BB has signed with Def Jam, so his solo album should finally see the light of day.

If it was possible to have carnal relations with music, while we would have a steady conjugal visiting schedule with the entire Black Keys catalogue, we would also have a tawdry affair with Lou Barlow’s “Gravitate”.

http://www.lala.com/external/flash/SingleSongWidget.swf

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Rock ‘n’ Roll as Educational Tool

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I’ve always liked the Black Keys, but I have been getting more into them lately thanks to an early taste, via the uber groovy track “Tighten Up” (not a cover of the Archie Bell and the Drells’ song as I originally suspected), of their new album that’s coming out in May. Dan and Pat are Ohio boys who grew up in Akron, relatively speaking, just down the road from where I grew up. This is sometimes weird and slightly unsettling.

For instance: In doing some TBK fansite reading, I came across a familiar face.

See that big, craggy-faced dude with the feathers who’s lurking behind the amps? I know that dude. I’ve passed him many times throughout my life. Never knew his name or where he came from, but I always gave him a nod and a smile in passing.

Well, not that dude exactly. You see, that dude is a representation (possibly to size) of this dude:

I don’t know how many times I’ve passed him, and I’ve always admired him (especially during my high school years when I was obsessed with American Indian culture), but I never knew a damn thing about him until today. He has a name. Rotaynah. His creator is Hungarian-born Ohio artist Peter Wolf Toth, and Toth has erected at least one monolithic Indian head sculpture in every state in the country (some states have two or three of them), as well as in some provinces of Canada. They each have a name, and, collectively, they make the Trail of the Whispering Giants.

And it only took me twenty-plus years to find that out. Thanks, Dan and Pat!

(Astute observers may have also noted that Rotaynah makes an appearance on the cover of the Black Keys’ album Rubber Factory.)

  • Speaking of TBK, it didn’t take long for “Next Girl” to get posted on the net after it was offered as a tour tickets pre-sale incentive. You can listen to it at I Am Fuel You Are Friends. Though I have already listened to it enough times for all of us combined.

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Late to the Party: BlakRoc

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NTSIB could be all late-to-the-party all the time. Some music I am slow to warm up to (I’m just now starting to get on board with Local Natives). Some music I know I like, but I don’t really get into until years after I first hear it. Some music I don’t even know about until it’s old news.

BlakRoc falls into the third category for me, and I’m still mystified that I didn’t even know about this project this time last week. For others who may be as out of the loop as I have been on this: BlakRoc is a collaborative project between the Black Keys and Damon Dash of Roc-A-Fella Records. Dash helped bring a number of hip-hop luminaries in for the project, like Mos Def, Ludacris, Raekwon, Q-Tip and the RZA. The fucking RZA! Names even white people recognize! There’s even a from-the-grave appearance from Ol’ Dirty Bastard.

It’s no secret that the Black Keys have soul, and their groove-heavy music is a perfect, strong background for the rhymes laid down on this project. BlakRoc is fucking sweet, and NTSIB hasn’t been this instantaneously excited about an album in a long time.

http://www.lala.com/external/flash/SingleSongWidget.swf

The BlakRoc website could keep you busy for hours because not only have they posted videos of their appearances on Letterman and Fallon, but they also have webisodes of each of their recording sessions.

BlakRoc Official Website