HelloAngel
ONE love, blood, life
[SIMG]http://forum.interference.com/gallery/data//585/11265blackkeys-sml.jpg[/SIMG]
By Andy Smith
2006.11
A gritty and gutsy gulp of Midwestern electric blues, The Black Keys homebrewed their new “Magic Potion” in a basement. Somehow, the overused tag “retro” fails to capture the primal power of this Akron, Ohio-based duo of Dan Auerbach and Patick Carney. Aggressive yet vulnerable, the 11 tracks on this masterpiece express everyman themes of sex, spirit, and dissatisfaction, spontaneously spewing from the restless mouth of a man who took up rock and roll to avoid respectable work.
When this band was born at the dawn of the century, the future musical colleagues were already friends and lawn-mowing college dropouts who decided to jam one day when Auerbach’s former bandmates failed to show for a session. The 2002 debut disc “Big Come Up” soon followed. While “Potion” may be a major-label debut and major breakthrough for the Keys, the record proudly resists polish, purposefully wearing its underproduction like grass-soiled denim.
From the moment the desperate and dedicated drive of “Just Got To Be” rips from the speakers, fans can feel the aura of an instant classic, a record that feels like it dropped itself on this century like a time-capsule from the abrasive days of asbestos, analog, and amphetamines, wickedly messy and made for turntables and eight-track players.
Infinitely impatient throughout, the immediate “Potion” pours from the amplifiers, a liquid manifestation of rust-belt ruminations getting rowdy like spilled coffee on a worn carpet. Songs drip out of Auerbach and Carney and into our ears like wet concrete and Wild Irish Rose, expressing regional pride with raunchy power, a lowdown fuzz and rock and roll buzz. The Black Keys blast us into the past by being present with timeless, masculine ferocity. The tempestuous “Modern Times” leaks lusty riffs from a busted shot glass, making a scratchy musical headline of twitchy discontent.
Stripped down and sonically simple, each moaning installation sounds spiritually profound, the voices of God and the Devil trading barbs on a low-fi boombox. Both sacred and nasty, the Black Keys flip-the-musical-bird at the fanciful revival of both synth and prog, choosing instead another form for renewing rock’s roots in a postmodern, Midwestern reckoning made from the aroma of factory fumes and the texture of used motor oil.
Most of these songs sound so familiar that a novice listener might mistake them for cover tunes or the top-secret, lost-tapes of a side-project channeling the ghosts of Jimi Hendrix and John Bonham. While the record feels real for any season, even fall 2006, the lyrics were stolen from eternity, with certain refrains branding themselves into listeners’ brains. “I don’t want to go to hell, but if I do, it’ll be ‘cause of you,” opens the eerie query into love’s underbelly known as “Strange Desire.” While the words for “Goodbye Babylon” could be stolen samples from a reggae rant, they form a perfectly bruised, Bush-era anthem of anti-war sentiment: “Now, our boys, they’re falling/Our leaders are all appalling/And you can bet, by God/Goodwill is gone.”
When “Potion” screeches to its crunchy coda in the “Elevator,” Auerbach reveals he gets “seasick on dryland” and hears “voices saying ‘Do what you can.’” The manic mood of the terminal track provides a possible testimonial to the loopy, vertiginous, and self-medicated working and middle class tribe that gives us bands like the Black Keys and their growing following.
Auerbach and Carney sustain the Black Keys to stay in Akron, not leave it. They’re greatest aspiration is to hear their records blasted from local porches where friends share beer and barbecue. “Magic Potion” is exactly the unpretentious elixir needed to make such goals real. Anchored in the region known as an armpit of the nation and armed with such pure adrenaline, the Black Keys make music that could never come from the coasts. Only in the sky above such blessed and vast Midwest nothingness can we see the smoky trails that require us to crave such seething sonic somethingness.
For more information on the Black Keys, visit the official website and MySpace page. “Magic Potion” was released in September on Nonesuch.
By Andy Smith
2006.11
A gritty and gutsy gulp of Midwestern electric blues, The Black Keys homebrewed their new “Magic Potion” in a basement. Somehow, the overused tag “retro” fails to capture the primal power of this Akron, Ohio-based duo of Dan Auerbach and Patick Carney. Aggressive yet vulnerable, the 11 tracks on this masterpiece express everyman themes of sex, spirit, and dissatisfaction, spontaneously spewing from the restless mouth of a man who took up rock and roll to avoid respectable work.
When this band was born at the dawn of the century, the future musical colleagues were already friends and lawn-mowing college dropouts who decided to jam one day when Auerbach’s former bandmates failed to show for a session. The 2002 debut disc “Big Come Up” soon followed. While “Potion” may be a major-label debut and major breakthrough for the Keys, the record proudly resists polish, purposefully wearing its underproduction like grass-soiled denim.
From the moment the desperate and dedicated drive of “Just Got To Be” rips from the speakers, fans can feel the aura of an instant classic, a record that feels like it dropped itself on this century like a time-capsule from the abrasive days of asbestos, analog, and amphetamines, wickedly messy and made for turntables and eight-track players.
Infinitely impatient throughout, the immediate “Potion” pours from the amplifiers, a liquid manifestation of rust-belt ruminations getting rowdy like spilled coffee on a worn carpet. Songs drip out of Auerbach and Carney and into our ears like wet concrete and Wild Irish Rose, expressing regional pride with raunchy power, a lowdown fuzz and rock and roll buzz. The Black Keys blast us into the past by being present with timeless, masculine ferocity. The tempestuous “Modern Times” leaks lusty riffs from a busted shot glass, making a scratchy musical headline of twitchy discontent.
Stripped down and sonically simple, each moaning installation sounds spiritually profound, the voices of God and the Devil trading barbs on a low-fi boombox. Both sacred and nasty, the Black Keys flip-the-musical-bird at the fanciful revival of both synth and prog, choosing instead another form for renewing rock’s roots in a postmodern, Midwestern reckoning made from the aroma of factory fumes and the texture of used motor oil.
Most of these songs sound so familiar that a novice listener might mistake them for cover tunes or the top-secret, lost-tapes of a side-project channeling the ghosts of Jimi Hendrix and John Bonham. While the record feels real for any season, even fall 2006, the lyrics were stolen from eternity, with certain refrains branding themselves into listeners’ brains. “I don’t want to go to hell, but if I do, it’ll be ‘cause of you,” opens the eerie query into love’s underbelly known as “Strange Desire.” While the words for “Goodbye Babylon” could be stolen samples from a reggae rant, they form a perfectly bruised, Bush-era anthem of anti-war sentiment: “Now, our boys, they’re falling/Our leaders are all appalling/And you can bet, by God/Goodwill is gone.”
When “Potion” screeches to its crunchy coda in the “Elevator,” Auerbach reveals he gets “seasick on dryland” and hears “voices saying ‘Do what you can.’” The manic mood of the terminal track provides a possible testimonial to the loopy, vertiginous, and self-medicated working and middle class tribe that gives us bands like the Black Keys and their growing following.
Auerbach and Carney sustain the Black Keys to stay in Akron, not leave it. They’re greatest aspiration is to hear their records blasted from local porches where friends share beer and barbecue. “Magic Potion” is exactly the unpretentious elixir needed to make such goals real. Anchored in the region known as an armpit of the nation and armed with such pure adrenaline, the Black Keys make music that could never come from the coasts. Only in the sky above such blessed and vast Midwest nothingness can we see the smoky trails that require us to crave such seething sonic somethingness.
For more information on the Black Keys, visit the official website and MySpace page. “Magic Potion” was released in September on Nonesuch.
