Brothers - The Black Keys

Previous Black Keys albums always felt a little like someone took Spoon, sucked out most of the irony (a mixed blessing) and gave them a good lesson in blues-rock. The minimalist rock thing worked pretty well for both bands - solid hooks, raw energy and music that didn't feel produced to death. But there's always that point in a Spoon album where the repetition wears thin, and I can't help wondering if it wouldn't have been OK to maybe just add one-teensy little extra layer. Is it too much to ask for just one unexpected horn trill? Maybe a real bridge? I had the same problem with albums like Rubber Factory and ThickFreakness. When the hook was good enough, it could carry a song all by itself ('When the Lights Go Out' still rocks my world) - but it's damn hard to write an entire album of songs that can carry themselves on a single hook.

Enter Brothers. The Black Keys stopped being slaves to their own sound, and the results are phenomenal - when I heard Dan Auerbach doing an R&B falsetto 22 seconds into the first track (and doing it well), I knew I was in for something different, and I was digging it. When I heard the first shoo-wop from the backing vocals 40 seconds later (hey, whaddya know - a song CAN build!), I was hooked. 'Next Girl' takes it back into more familiar Black Keys territory, with Auerbach's vocals channeling a little Jack Bruce, but even here the game has been upped - there's new depth in the riffs, and real variation across chorus verse that breaks up the hook.

The subject matter is more personal too; When Auerbach sings "I'll be the go getter', he's just setting you up for this:

Palm trees, the flat broke disease

And L.A. has got me on my knees

I am the bluest of blues

Every day a different, different way to lose

The go getter

The disjointed bass and guitar parts seem to fall on top of the beat, stumbling through the song like a drunk making his way home after the sun has come up. Patrick Carney's drum work is sublime - a shifting pattern that always seems to skip the downbeat and missing 2 & 4 just enough that when he does hit them, it almost feels like just another syncopation. I'm always impressed by drummers who can give a song a new texture with what they do - many of the greatest virtuoso's of trap set don't have this quality. Carney has it in spades, and his work here is so finely tuned to needs of each song that it's easy to overlook just how 'right' it is. But that's true of so much of this album - every song is so carefully crafted, with nothing unnecessary, nothing that doesn't feel effortless, that it's a pleasure to just sink in and forget the artifice that makes this art.

The little house on Ellis Drive

Is where I felt most alive

The oak tree covered that old Ford

I miss it Lord, I miss it Lord