The Black Keys

I like them, PP. There are not many on ILM who do.

Read this: Black Keys

Both albums are great, if you like that sort of thing, and I do. Buy The Big Come Up first.

Here's my review of their album, Thickfreakness:

Thickfreakness
the Black Keys
Fat Possum/Epitaph
4 stars

Forget the White Stripes. Okay, don’t forget them, but they are in neither the first nor last word in guitar-and-drums-only punked-out blues. But that’s more or less where the similarities end between the high-concept ‘Stripes and the medium-fidelity Black Keys.
On their follow-up to last year’s stunning debut The Big Come Up, the Akron, OH duo of Dan Auerbach (guitar, vocals) and Patrick Carney (drums) serve up a no-frills fuzz-fest of chunky licks, hoary moans and whalloping of soul. Thickfreakness gets right to the point and stays there for all 11 songs. There isn’t a single dull moment. Though the Black Keys are very much in the tradition of 60s and 70s blues-rock outfits like Cream or even early ZZ Top, they never waste time on the sort of excessive noodling that mires groups of that era, and continues to ruin a lot of otherwise good blues-rock today.
Like Them Wranch’s overlooked garage classic Medium Rare, or even Richard Meltzer’s novel The Night (Alone), Thickfreakness unflinchingly concerns itself with the seemy underbelly of human emotion. Songs like “Set You Free”, “Midnight in Her Eyes” and “Hurt Like Mine” are raw insinuations of chronic heartache, acute loneliness and bad decisions.
Even when they’re trafficking in the most clichéd idioms of the blues, the Black Keys sound unfailingly fresh and invigorating.

No I never stop talking about Meltzer. Actually, I had pulled out TN(A) that week. Last week I opened my review of the new New Pornographers with a quote from The Count of Monte Cristo, so the Black Keys got lucky.
This week I'm reviewing LiveOnRelease (sub-Avril Lavignes) and am reading Coyote v. Acme so, we'll see where I go with that in about 4 hours.

but best of luck to them.

if a british band did it though they would be roundly slagged for beign way too retro.

although in blues terms, incest is a pay off gimmick.

the band makes really horrible sounding records, like the actual recording quality. dude should be banned from producing. he almost ruined a really good jessica lea mayfield record and the shit i've heard off the dr. john thing has those same terrible thin sounds. he's no jack white.

I saw them appear on a "top 10 worst hipster bands" recently

lol @ this band

watching their shitty drummer struggle to play the most basic rock and roll beat possibly imaginable is one of contemporary rock music's many delights

these guys are such clowns

how did they get popular? genuine question

The "five rock records a year", Rolling Stone subscribing crowd loves the shit out of them.

they made a serious leap at some point though, like i saw them in '03 and they were so scuzzy and unfashionable and at some point they just flipped a switch and were like "we're going to play arenas now"

do not do not do not understand these guys at all. people love them though!

I'm not sure I can explain the "why", I think they just sorta became the default "real" rock band for the RS crowd that hates folkie stuff and can't stand keyboards.

i never understood these dudes and their terrible music until i read this: http://www.thelmagazine.com/TheMeasure/archives/2011/03/07/the-black-keys-dan-auerbach-allegedly-loves-dave-matthews-calls-indie-pop-gay

I actually don't think their music is "terrible" (with the possible exception of Danger Mouse's shitty production job), I just think it's even worse because they manage to make ostensibly garage rock completely bland and lifeless.

i think they were able to ride the strokes, hives, vines, white stripes, etc. movement of "real rock music", and then found success w/ the first few danger mouse collaboration albums. also licensing the shit out of their music might have helped too.

yeah but the hives & stokes & white stripes are all pretty good! and put out some good-to-great records imo. i saw black keys play one incredibly packed club back in '06 or so. ditched my party after less than an hour so i could go catch Jack Oblivian. the talent/fame contrast between the two shows was kind of striking.

they're cut from the same cloth and appeal to the same people in some ways as kings of leon or some other bullshit. they're so boring and so dumb. i mean the drummer is engaged in an ongoing twitter beef with justin bieber, which is just the most pathetic thing.

these guys fuckin suck

I like the album cover with the reservation that cool op-art covers are in vogue with the most loathsome bands right now

yeah but the hives & stokes & white stripes are all pretty good!

fuck all these bands imo, ESPECIALLY the hives. vines were the shittiest though

tmz follows them around. it's crazy

i liked rubber factory in 2005 but have no idea why they still play music

$$$

i feel such a loyalty though to the black keys even though i don't really listen to them. we're all from northeast ohio - i'm from cleveland, they're from akron, and it's such a underdog of a region that i'm happy that they are so huge, i can't help but root for them. i remember when my brother-in-law went to their first show in cleveland like 12 years ago or something.

though i'd rather a cleveland band like mr. gnome get world famous instead:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dm_N27v38_Y

i don't think i'm forceful enough to really make my point in the midst of a bunch of hate but this band was important to my life when i was much more musically naive and opened my eyes to a lot of cool stuff, and i still have a soft spot for the Big Come Up and Rubber Factory. alright thanks everybody

yea i have no animosity towards them.

just blew 20 minutes reading about the drummer's divorce, yeesh

xp tbf re: auerbach "loving" dave matthews, that quote is about auerbach in high school. 99% of my friends fucking loved dave matthews in high school. i won't bedrudge anyone for their high school tastes.

my old band played a show w/mr. gnome once! they were really good & seemed nice

rad! i've heard they are good folks.

i can't quite place "fever" but every time they've played it on the radio today i've gotten some deja entendu. any idea what it might be reminding me of?

i think it's some arctic monkeys song. they sound like, exactly the same.

Basically, "Tighten Up" became a big hit due to it's ctachy whistling and being used in a bunch of commercials. This was also around the time that Jack White announced that The White Stripes had broken up, and were thus they were able to pick up a fanbase of people still craving bluesy modern rock.

Or at least, that's what I gathered.

yeah that's kind of otm - i think they basically became what people wanted the white stripes to be.

I guess ppl wanted the white stripes to be a less charismatic version of Ryan gosling and a proclaimer after he's been stretched out on a medieval torture rack.

i think that's about right!

i just realized! it reminds me of "disturbia"

(lol)

I guess ppl wanted the white stripes to be a less charismatic version of Ryan gosling and a proclaimer after he's been stretched out on a medieval torture rack.

― christmas candy bar (al leong), Tuesday, May 13, 2014 4:07 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lmao /thread

yeah, these guys seem to be everywhere now. i first heard about them b/c they recorded a tribute album to junior kimbrough or something and that got my attention. but then i listened to it. actually i probably heard of them before, but only in passing.

i don't find them offensive or anything, though i'm sure i'd begin to hate them if i read enough of their reviews (i can just imagine). they're mediocre, but so are 90% of bands that do well.

as for the ca. 2000 Rock bands mentioned upthread, the strokes were a pretty great pop group for a while. the hives were just revivalists way in over their heads, and the vines were another one of those patently atrocious bands the UK music press goes gaga for every six months.

jesus i just got a live nation spam email and they are playing the target center (20K arena where the minnesota timberwolves play), no idea they were that big

feels like they decided to pretend they were that big and people believed them

whoever compared them to kings of leon is right, no idea how that dull-as-dust band manages to get anyone excited enough to fill up stadiums year after year but hey it happens.

I like 'em. Brothers and El Camino are enjoyable for what they are, but I don't listen to them a hell of a lot.

concert doc about the black keys:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaM6lTmhnak&sns=em

Trollbaiter3 years ago

The director could have substituted in the Black Keys for Blueshammer and the effect would be the same.

black keys=blueshammer?

I loves me some Black Keys! They rock. Fuck y'all haterz.

What does it mean for a piece of music to "rock"?

Black Keys supporter here!and to add to the controversy, big fan of Attack & Release, though Rubber Factory is the definitive work.

i guess "black keys=blueshammer lol" is the blueshammer of jokes

blueshumor

I loves me some Black Keys! They rock. Fuck y'all haterz.

― Mr. Snrub, Tuesday, May 13, 2014 11:26 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

THE RETURN OF

if the Black Keys sounded like Blueshammer they would suck less

they would be awesome if they sounded like rory gallagher

eh, the blueshammer comparison is kind of bullshit unless you're gonna throw it onto the 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 other white rock bands who ripped off original blues musicians, too, b/c on some level all those bands are blueshammers. even led zeppelin on a certain level.

I always feel like these guys bit Judah Bauer of Jon Spencer's side project band 20 Miles pretty hard...their first album on Fat Possum was dope, stripped down 2 piece blues deal

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAcQw7QN68U

I enjoyed some recent TV performances I've seen of theirs. Don't really get a blueshammer vibe at all, but maybe the new songs are super psyched out.

Yeah marcos otm there

Probably mentioned or debated upthread, but I don't know if I respect the band for just giving in and essentially making breadwinner Danger Mouse a member or no. I mean, Black Keys were reasonably popular before, for an indie act, but Danger Mouse made them mega. So does that count as a sell-out move to stick with him? Does that mean he deserves as much if not more credit than the band itself? "El Camino" was the first where he was given co-writer credit on every track, but he must have played a big role in the previous album's writing. The new one is a full collab/co-write, too. They should just call it Danger Keys.

A friend noticed that the drummer is perfectly fine when paired in a duo with the guitarist, but as a drummer in a full band, as the BK are now, he's sloppy city.

the guitarist was basically fixing the drummers mistakes imo

i think the blueshammer tag is cruel, these guys aren't particularly interesting or much fun IMO but they aren't just a punchline.

I would genuinely rather go see a local BBQ blues band play SRV and Albert King covers than see Black Keys

#coldshot

those guys are at least self-aware

"gotta get away" is my jam atm.

Neck in neck with Michael Jackson's album to debut at #1 next week

If these guys don't merit the blueshammer tag its because they're too ignorable. That vague inoffensive schmindie quality.

I keep waiting for these guys to make that one crossover jam that I'd want to hear twice (or hell, just remember the hook of) but it ain't happened yet.

Bluespaperweight

I had their first album, it was ok, i liked that '10 AM Automatic' song after that. There's worse omnipresent music out there, all the recent hits are fairly tolerable.

Keys enthusiasts/tolerators, is there anything missing from the formula "White Stripes - Violent Femmes = Black Keys"? Admittedly I ain't dug deep into the BK oeuvre.

What about Black Keys as NPR Gun Club?

yeah '10 AM Automatic' ain't bad. blueshammer doesn't work because there's no lengthy minor pentatonic solos (there are short ones) or honkin on the ole mouth harp.

I feel like they must be self aware if they can title a song with a hilariously loose drum track 'Tighten Up'

A-Bing the two, croup's equation is pretty accurate though, yeah

i don't get a violent femmes vibe from this band at all

RS cover story from a few years ago had details that I found very telling: that auerbach is suspect in some circles (elucidated by Carney's exwife) in that G Love and special Sauce were his favorite band as a teen. which I might snort at were I to be uncharitable to be a guy who's 8 years younger than me. I would think it's likely that he probly went in for JSBX hard afterwards, which would lead to 20 miles, referenced above.

and I think there was this bit about Jack white being pissed at his ex-wife because she had their kids go to the same school as Auerbach's, and he doesn't want to go to parent teacher conferences and be around the guy that he considers to be his lousy imitator.

and some ill-will might be down to the whole presumptuous "we're saving rock from nickelback" thang—funny now, as Nickelback's time appears to be over. BK seemed to be one of the dime a dozen blooz duos I saw live in the 10 years spanning JSBX and White Stripes.

Yeah that's why there's a minus sign in there

Xpost

ah ok

I would listen to a Nickelback/Danger Mouse collab.

The other thing they are missing from the Stripes is that Jack is a hotshit guitar player

Jack's guitars always sound amazing, but is he really that skilled at guitar? I'm sure he doesn't want to play fast, but could he play fast many-note solos if that's what he wanted? Can he play hotshit fingerpicking songs? "We're Going to Be Friends", if a good song, is some sub-blackbird fingerpicking.

yeah the guy has chops (doesn't always show em off, but he's more than capable)

Persona-wise, I find the Black Keys dudes way less annoying than Jack White. And loose though he may be, the drummer is miles better than Meg "1, 2, 3...um, um..." White.

Plus, I continue to find this video amusing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_PrT25o8Vs

yeah i've seen live footage of him going off and white got more showoffy on later stuff and in other projects

jack white's annoying persona is the best part!

the white stripes are super pretentious and the black keys are not and that's why the white stripes are way better

it was a concept band, naming their 2nd record de stijl and the coordinated clothes and stuff...it was art rock

full disclosure: i'm giving jack a lot of slack lately because of the neil young record and the angel holograms in his new record

What about Black Keys as NPR Gun Club?

― da croupier, Wednesday, May 14, 2014 7:40 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

uuuh fuck no bro

Most people itt seem to be acting like the Black Keys still sound like they did before Danger Mouse. Now they're catchy classic rock dudes.

Persona-wise, I find the Black Keys dudes way less annoying than Jack White.

Depends what you count as annoying. I don't recall Jack White complaining about other musicians as much as these guys.

this sounds like 'jack white shreds'

those are dope solos dude, wilding out

you like on some alan holdsworth shit or something?

I guess I just find it weird to describe jack white as a hotshit guitarist when there's probably a few insurance salesmen in every US city that are more skilled.

i guess we have a different definition

if you mean like tone attorney type dudes with pristine $3000 Paul Reed Smith koa wood guitars with active pickups and boutique hand wired combo amps that have never been out of the house and boxes of polybagged back issues of Guitar Player magazines who can breeze through mixolydian mode scales up and down the neck but have never actually played a show outside of the neighborhood block party that one year yeah you're right. but jack is audacious and so are those solos. he's got solid chops and a distinctive way of playing.

yeah, i'm definitely being a bit cranky about it, but I agree with everything in that post. I think I'm just channeling some leftover hatred I have from seeing some documentary where jack white and the edge got together to talk about blues guitar.

http://thumbs2.ebaystatic.com/d/l225/m/mO2cvHWPAb229YPw6Bkjm3w.jpg

Yeah slippery slope there. There are "more skilled" guitarists all over the world that play the absolutely worst shit. "Hot shit" is relative to the context of the music. There certainly are insurance salesman/music store employess all over the world who believe this whole-heartedly though.

yeah but you can't really separate jack white from the insurance salesmen music store employee guitar world culture. he is often the focus of it!

as his place in that documentary suggests, he's probably the main example of a 21st century "guitar hero". is there anyone else in the mainstream along those lines?

The only parts of that movie I remember are J. White making the single-string guitar on some porch and J. Page putting on Link Wray and just dorking the fuck out over it. Those scenes were pretty cool.

xp jonny greenwood maybe?

maybe that muse guy? feel like there are lots of metal dudes that maybe don't count as 'guitar heros'

i definitely don't like jack white's style of playing, but he can def play

The only thing he really has in abundance is style!

Tom Morello feels like a "21st century guitar" guy, even though he was big in the 20th.

hey UMS! I have been cunt-struck for the "tone attorney" phrase since I discovered it on the electrical audio boards…does anyone know if that's where it emerged?

and while I can't cite any examples right at this second, it seems like all that Jack White did when he hit big was scream that every single thing about modern music—recording technique but musicians especially— were no good and that he implicitly and maybe Mick Collins or somebody were carrying the torch for real music. Reminds me of a passage in the oral history about detroit, D. rock city, where some disgruntled detroit person, one of many there who side with Jim Diamond but that JW regards as a pure hater boiling over with envy, recalled that White listened to Rage against the Machine, Korn and other mid 90s nu-metal, which seems even more damning than digging G love.

yeah, chops guys who geek out over Vai and SRV and used to read guitar mags consider White like the only bright spot in the "popular music" of the last 15 years. John Mayer can play, but they hate his songwriting, and there's guys like Oz Noy and Nels Cline, but that's niche. many of those guys are still really really mad about the decline of chops in the mainstream after 20 years.

haha oh man forgot about nels cline. That brings up mark kozelek as another potential modern guitar hero.

i guess we have a different definition

if you mean like tone attorney type dudes with pristine $3000 Paul Reed Smith koa wood guitars with active pickups and boutique hand wired combo amps that have never been out of the house and boxes of polybagged back issues of Guitar Player magazines who can breeze through mixolydian mode scales up and down the neck but have never actually played a show outside of the neighborhood block party that one year yeah you're right. but jack is audacious and so are those solos. he's got solid chops and a distinctive way of playing.

― dollar rave club (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, May 15, 2014 8:04 AM (27 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^5

haha veronica i believe it came from a local music board i post to w/some crossover with EA...i believe that was a z0m-z0m turn of phrase

its too good

it's so perfect i use it all the time now and i don't even think that it's not a common phrase

I don't recall Jack White complaining about other musicians as much as these guys.

Haha, except for all the shit he talks about the Black Keys! Anyway, Jack White is annoying and I don't like him much as a guitar player. His guitar is as annoying as he is, imo. The funniest thing about that doc is the self-cancelling nature of those three dudes: Jack White is only great compared to the Edge, who is not much of a guitarist. But everything Jack White does absolutely pales compared to Jimmy Page, to whom he owes a ton. So of course they plop him next to page. It's like, "Hey, Jack White, I bet you feel great about yourself after the Edge sheepishly showed you how to play 'I Will Follow," oh you do, well, here's Jimmy Page, motherfucker, how do you feel about yourself now?"

Persona-wise, I find the Black Keys dudes way less annoying than Jack White.

otm, white was always a hurdle for me in appreciating the white stripes. i think i have more appreciation for the black keys because being from cleveland i knew them from the beginning and they really did seem like two regular dudes from a shitty northeast ohio town, and they seemed unpretentious. that said i value "pretentiousness" in many other bands (PINK FLOYD RULES!!!!!!!!!!!!!) but not really in garage blues-rock duos

every photo i see of auerbach makes me worry he's not getting enough sleep

yeah, JiC's post sums up my feelings. it's a "this dude is the heir to jimmy page's Guitar Player market?" feeling. it has nothing to do with my enjoyment of the music. sure, you can define "good guitar playing" however you want, but there are quantitative metrics. and I believe that people mistakenly think that Jack White is excellent within those metrics because he's marketed that way.

but I totally agree that white can wild out in a way that auerbach perhaps can't, and it is a big reason for the gap in enjoyment for me. so UMS's original post is otm, and I'm sad that I even went down this road ;_;

Persona-wise, I find the Black Keys dudes way less annoying than Jack White. And loose though he may be, the drummer is miles better than Meg "1, 2, 3...um, um..." White.

black keys drummer makes meg white seem like billy fucking cobham

Eh, they both suck, sorry. Would see a Billy Cobham/Jack White duo in a heartbeat.

they do both suck but one of them can't even suck properly

^^

lmao at "tone attorney type dudes" totally using that one from now on

big come up and thickfreakness were great. all went to shit after that.

I admired-from-a-distance the loose, trashy, swinging quality of Meg White's drumming, but it never lifted off when it needed to (although I'm not a Stripes fan anyway -- White always sounded like he was playing at a style of music, not unlike someone like Wynton Marsalis).

But the Black Keys drummer is just stiff and dull and I'm already sleepy from writing that much about him.

yeah, that's it. the 'looseness' of the Burt's Bees drummer seems to come from stiffness. that's what makes it so bad.

yeah, JiC's post sums up my feelings. it's a "this dude is the heir to jimmy page's Guitar Player market?" feeling. it has nothing to do with my enjoyment of the music. sure, you can define "good guitar playing" however you want, but there are quantitative metrics. and I believe that people mistakenly think that Jack White is excellent within those metrics because he's marketed that way.

― the glimmer man (Sufjan Grafton), Thursday, May 15, 2014 11:27 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hey hey hey btw tone attorney stuff aside I am in NO WAY claiming that JW is on the same planet as Jimmy page as a guitarist, songwriter, producer, anything btw

just saying him and meg were a distinctive thing, and i think he can play...but when i first saw them i kinda got they were going for a look/aesthetic in a real way which is why they turned into stars as opposed to 65 other late 90s estrus records type garage rock/blues bands that were in that world

black keys don't have any aesthetic they aren't about anything except being...well okay i guess these guys are kind of a new band that you could dig if you like classic rock but want a new band to like

kinda like the black crowes w/o the tunes

Feel like it's a testament to how exciting the Black Keys are that this thread has turned into a discussion of whether Jack White is really a good guitar player or not.

lol otm

The other thing they are missing from the Stripes is that Jack is a hotshit guitar player

― dollar rave club (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, May 15, 2014 7:05 AM Bookmark

Also that Meg, despite her lack of technique, had a great fucking drum sound

yes also true

I'm currently listening to the dan auerbach solo record in order to unpack just how much of this is the drums

also the idea that jack white's music would be better with a "better" drummer than meg seems to be refuted by...all the other music jack white has made

lol otm

yeah, that's basically where i'm at with this solo record experiment as well. but i do think that white reserves a certain writing and production voice for white stripes songs. so it might be an unfair if still pretty funny point.

the white stripes are super pretentious and the black keys are not and that's why the white stripes are way better

yup

auerbach is like nu-clapton

basing that entirely on the beard and the dead eyes

not looking forward to his "Tears In Heaven"...

...after he murders Jack White's child

johnny winter and eric clapton vs jack white and dan auerbach

mostly i feel relief that the whole "guitar hero" meme doesn't have nearly as much currency these days than it used to.

think it has more currency than ever. there just aren't many new guitar gyros.

really? on what basis would you say that?

When a crowd hears a good solo, they cheer?

Brad Paisley a current guitar hero. St
Vincent too.

When a crowd hears a good solo, they cheer?

― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, May 15, 2014 4:58 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

now that's just uncivilized

probably smash hit video game Guitar Hero

bloodthirsty hordes always cheer when a good solo is executed

they hang out at guitar center every weekend, sipping their vitamin spiked mondos while arguing the superiority of the phrygian and mixolydian modes

richard bishop is kind of a marginal gtr hero

The mags are trying to make Gary Clark Jr. happen, although bets are hedged on his album by emphasizing him as a neo soul/lite hip hop dude as much as being a guitar god.

this stuff works retroactively. If a band with guitars gets popular and embraces any part of the identifiable canonical rock gtr lineage, then they get the "guitar god" treatment. Cases in point: neither Cobain nor White were not particularly showy about their chops on their career-defining stuff, but as they became gargantuan and their connections to previous hard rock stuff became more apparent, then they were in.

someone like Greenwood, however, is always going to be less idolized cuz his stylistic reference points are largely outside the canon of Hendrix/Page/Van Halen whatever

and anyway who cares what Guitar Player and their readers think, really

i have a Guitar Player-like Gods of Guitar book and Jonny Greenwood is in it along with tom verlaine and andy summers

kurt cobain is not

is rivers cuomo a guitar god?

god i fucking hope not

http://thumbs4.ebaystatic.com/d/l225/m/mKK44eS2faDav6Q9ia6fZ1A.jpg

holding that guitar don't make you eddie

The mags are trying to make Gary Clark Jr. happen, although bets are hedged on his album by emphasizing him as a neo soul/lite hip hop dude as much as being a guitar god.

Really? Dude just sounds like Robin Trower to me.

i guess the "guitar hero" concept has taken a different direction since i last checked in, since kurt cobain is far, far from a "guitar hero" in the steve vai/jimmy page/eric clapton/etc. sense

Marnie Stern is a guitar hero.

adrian belew is a guitar hero

is there a thread for ppl that only readers of guitar magazines like? like a place where we can talk about joe satriani?

please make one! would love to talk some Silver Surfer!

is there a thread for ppl that only readers of guitar magazines like? like a place where we can talk about joe satriani?

― call all destroyer, Thursday, May 15, 2014 6:59 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://stores.guitarcenter.com/

be sure to pick up some of these on the way

thread for discussion of guitarists i have only heard of because i read guitar magazines in the late 90s

hahahaha. fantastic title and premise.

Enjoy: http://noisey.vice.com/guitar-moves/dan-auerbach

One of the weird things about these guys is that the guy who founded Earthquaker Devices used to be their tour manager, but they don't have any Earthquaker on their pedalboards.

Like, I respect Boss pedals. Plenty of people have made great music with them. But if you were connected to a guy who makes distinctive, acclaimed effects pedals, I don't see why you'd use a Boss Tremolo instead of an Earthquaker Hummingbird.

http://www.effectsbay.com/2012/04/rig-rundown-the-black-keys-dan-auerbach/

maybe they hate that guy

Or vice versa

http://youtu.be/Ss9Znucx4GM

Anyone have a feeling on the new one out today?

I lived in Columbus, hung out with Michael Carney, Patrick's brother who also did much of their artwork, at Magnolia Thunderpussy when I worked there, and saw the Black Keys play Little Brothers way before they were playing arenas. So I feel a little differently about them compared to most. I obligatorily like the earlier stuff better(TM) but I don't get the hate many have for them but I am incredibly biased.

Anyway, the new record is fine to these ears.

Because of they would...

https://www.stereogum.com/2284545/the-black-keys-announce-america-loves-crypto-concert/news/

As Brooklyn Vegan points out, the band announced on Instagram that next Friday, Oct. 25, they’ll play an America Loves Crypto event in their hometown of Akron at the Akron Civic Theatre. It appears to be an event geared around getting out the vote for cryptocurrency-friendly candidates? (UPDATE: I’m told the crypto movement is putting in work to unseat Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown, a crypto critic, so this event might actually help deliver the Senate to the Republicans?) According to the page where you can RSVP to attend, “There will be complimentary food and drink for attendees. Doors open at 5PM and this event is on a first come first serve basis.” Comments are turned off on the band’s Instagram post announcing this gig.

Perennial bar music favorites the black keys

It looks like this is really backfiring on them, even their still-extant fanbase seems to be turning on them over this. The band's sub-reddit is filled with people RSVPing to claim a spot and then not show up.

the other acts who are also "standing with crypto"

Black Pumas
Chainsmokers
Jessie Murph
Big Sean
Lauv
070 Shake

their endorsed candidates are an absolute mercenary and unprincipled hodgepodge

https://www.standwithcrypto.org/races/

https://www.stereogum.com/2285565/the-black-keys-crypto-concert-was-even-sillier-than-expected/news/

These guys are lame, but they address some recent aspects of their lameness here:

https://archive.ph/pUN0v

Their excuses simultaneously make a lot of sense while still underscoring the fact that they are lame and that had they not magnified their lameness like they had last year, they would have found several other ways to demonstrate just how lame they are.

On first single “The Night Before” (written with Daniel Tashian, who co-wrote and co-produced Kacey Musgraves’ Golden Hour), the group leans into its upbeat pop-rock side. “It was very organically [done] in the studio together,” singer-guitarist Dan Auerbach tells Rolling Stone. “The three of us just came up with it together on the spot.”

currently the subject of a bidding war between Ford and Ram

Just three guys in a pickup truck

They should do a tour with no pickups.