It was the summer of 1976. I was sitting on my haunches making beetles fight each other in the middle of the gravel road out front of my family's Ohio homestead. My granpappy leapt out of his rocking chair and faced the road with a grin wider than the Gateway Arch. I didn't know what the hell he was looking at, but I heard it soon enough.
Out from the south came a pillar of dust flanked by twin black Harley Davidsons. They didn't look like they'd any intention of stopping. I stood up, stick in hand, and braced myself to see everlasting light. They came closer and closer, their engines bubbling like tar pits kicked into overdrive. The two long-haired sons of bitches holding onto the motorcycles had cigarettes dangling from their lips, God knows how they held onto them at the speed they were going at. They were so close now I could see their dirty fists rip back even further on the throttles. I closed my eyes as I was caught in the twister. Convinced I'd been smothered so quickly by those black steel raiders I couldn't even feel it, I opened my eyes to look at Heaven -- and saw instead a vinyl record twirling around the stick in my hand. Pressed into the center was the word "brothers".
"Look at them ol' boys," Granpappy said. "Let's go put that thing on!"
\\Album review + mp3s from Brothers after the jump//
Brothers is the latest album release from blues rockers The Black Keys, and god damn is it good. The 55 minute album rocks and rolls in every way possible. I'll detail a few songs here.
Album opener Everlasting Light made me envision the above scene, with its old-timey singing from both Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney, with the soft-spoken Nicole Wray providing a gentle Southern cooing.
The Next Girl is the Black Keys' anthem for every pissed off man post-breakup. My next girl will be nothing like my ex girl, Auerbach swears. Certainly he's speaking on behalf of every dude's found himself freshly singly. The tambourine on this track makes me think of shot glasses being smashed in emphasis of "seriously, dude, she's fucking crazy man, I swear to God I'm done with her!"
Next stop is the West Coast with The Go Getter. The eerie surf-style distorted guitar twang backs up Auerbach's summation of warped life in Cali -"Palm trees, flat broke disease, and LA has got me on my knees." Sure its pretty, just like the girls -- but they'll both break you sooner or later.
Its not all rip em up rock and roll killers, though. Black Keys do a fantastic cover of Never Gonna Give You Up. No, not the rick roll version, actually its an Isaac Hayes song from his album Black Moses. The soul of Chef's original version has been retained, as Auerbach doesn't even sound like himself on this track. The Soul Man would be proud to hear it if he was alive today.
Overall, Brothers is going to earn your respect. It starts of strong and swings back and forth in intensity, but yanks your ears along for the ride the whole time. No wonder HBO uses their songs so often for pretty much every show they make. If you haven't listened to a band that keeps rock at its basics in a while, The Black Keys are definitely worth checking out. Best listened to on the highway with four people in each corner of the back of a pickup truck.
Its a total campfire album, but I don't think anybody'd want to be keeping to one place while listening to it. So maybe instead of a campfire you can use a torch, or your car's headlights. The band isn't planning on stopping through Portland on their tour this summer, but that's alright -- If I've got this album in tow, I'd be more than content to drive out to wherever the hell they are playing.
Check out these songs:
The Black Keys - Everlasting Light
The Black Keys - The Next Girl
The Black Keys - The Go Getter
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