The Black Keys’ Best Albums: A Buyers’ Guide
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A pair of scrawny kids from the industrial heartland of Akron, Ohio, The Black Keys never had the pedigree or mysterious allure of their similarly blues-inclined counterparts The White Stripes. Yet The Black Keys’ has been one of the more remarkable ascents of recent times. Two decades ago they were goofing off in the basement, figuring out how they could play their first show. Today the duo of Dan Auerbach (vocals, guitar) and Patrick Carney (drums) fill theatres and arenas the world over and enjoy the kind of superstar status that’s seen them rack up multiple Grammys and platinum sales.
Formed in 2001, The Black Keys took the raw spirit of the Delta as their entry point, before fucking with its form. The duo’s approach was always more inclusive though, treating the blues as a fluid entity through which they could streak it with heavy daubs of hip-hop, punk, hard-edged R&B and swampy Southern soul. Even in their formative days, Auerbach and Carney had an innate gift for absorbing the plurality of rock music and turning it into something nervy, fresh and ultimately euphoric.
They certainly never followed the easy route. Their debut, 2002’s The Big Come Up, was the first of three albums made in Carney’s basement, recorded in primitive lo-fi fashion on a cheap four-track. Follow-up Thickfreakness was largely the product of a 14-hour session with an old Tascam recorder, all the better to experience the spitting charge of the duo’s elemental garage-blues. By Rubber Factory (2004) they’d graduated to a disused tyre mill and cranked the noise through a rusted old console that served to make the Keys’ sound more expansive and sinister.
It wasn’t until fifth album Attack & Release (2008), their second on major label affiliate Nonesuch, that Auerbach and Carney headed into a studio and worked with an outside producer: Brian Burton, aka Danger Mouse. The songs were more ambitious, making use of guest musicians and a broader palette of sounds. It was their first record to dent the US Top 20, something they built on to glorious effect with next effort Brothers, issued two years later. Its combustible mix of pounding riff-rock and fat grooves suddenly blew them out into the lap of the wider world, where stadiums and mega-sales awaited.
Despite their huge success since, from 2014’s Billboard-topping Turn Blue to 2024’s Ohio Players, the pair appear not to have changed much. “We still work the same way,” says Carney. “We make stuff up in the studio, start goofing around, and the demos become the final record. It’s just like when we started out”.
…and some to avoid
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