When it was announced that Danger Mouse would be working with the Black Keys on their 2008 album, Attack & Release, it seemed like a fresh start for a band that had run out of ideas. While DM indeed brought some psychedelic side dishes to Dan Auerbach and Pat Carney’s meat-and-potatoes blues-rock table– a little pan flute here, some spaghetti Western guitar licks there– Attack & Release had its share of samey-sounding midtempo cuts, suggesting that the duo were content to write variations on the same theme. Subsequent side projects (both worked in Damon Dash’s not-disastrous rap-rock experiment Blakroc, and Carney formed Drummer) suggested that they probably felt this creative stagnation, too. As for Auerbach’s basically-a-Black-Keys-album solo effort, Keep It Hid: guy’s gotta get it out of his system somehow.
New challenges, as well as time apart from their main outfit, have served these guys well. Brothers is the loosest they’ve sounded since 2004’s Rubber Factory. The Keys haven’t undergone a drastic sonic shift or anything– at this point, no one is going to mistake them for anyone else, especially if they keep putting out songs like Brothers’ first two singles, “Next Girl” and “Tighten Up”. The former is boilerplate Black Keys, complete with a burned-barn riff for a chorus and lyrics about wayward women; the latter, the only Danger Mouse-produced cut on the record, features a whistle-heavy melody that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on Attack & Release. But you don’t come to the Black Keys for reinvention.
Instead, Brothers finds Carney and Auerbach augmenting their sound with some new stylistic tics, suggesting that they might’ve learned something from working with Danger Mouse. “Too Afraid to Love You” feels spooked-out thanks to Auerbach’s distanced vocals and some haunted harpsichord, while the Jock Jams beat on “Howlin’ For You” and “Black Mud”‘s winking nod to CCR’s “Green River” find the Keys in an uncharacteristically playful mode.
Most striking on Brothers is Auerbach’s incorporation of falsetto. The man has honed his speaker-blowing howl for so long now, it’s genuinely surprising to hear him try another vocal style. Even more surprising is how good he is at it, too: he’s controlled and natural on “Everlasting Light”, vibing with high-pitched restraint and turning the tune into a lo-fi T. Rex stomper, while on penultimate track and Jerry Butler cover “Never Gonna Give You Up”, he lets loose over a shimmering Motown melody.
If there’s one thing that keeps Brothers from jumping the gap between a “very good” album and a “great” album, it’s the running time. When it’s all said and done, the 15-track set runs almost an hour long, causing one to think that the Keys might have done the best material here a disservice by shoving so much onto one album when they could’ve easily saved some up for their next release. It makes a skeptical fan like myself wonder if the Keys spent themselves creatively here, and if the next record will just be more back-to-basics trad-blues mediocrity. If the next Black Keys record builds on Brothers, though, they still have some good music ahead of them.
— Larry Fitzmaurice, May 19, 2010
1. Everlasting Light
2. Next Girl
3. Tighten Up
4. Howlin’ For You
5. She’s Long Gone
6. Black Mud
7. The Only One
8. Too Afraid To Love You
9. Ten Cent Pistol
10. Sinister Kid
11. The Go Getter
12. I’m Not The One
13. Unknown Brother
14. Never Gonna Give You Up
15. These Days