They follow their nose and shift gears when the feeling strikes. There is the urgency of the muse, sure, but also the rare loyalty of friendship, a partnership derived from trying shit out, a collaboration built on communication through history.Īs such, The Black Keys have never been concerned with what their music means to an uninterested and perhaps disingenuously critical crowd. Where do you go after you’ve conquered and irrevocably altered the territory around you? Even this narrative misses something though because The Black Keys are also a band that thrives on more than just having something to prove or say. They’ve reached the tallest peaks both critically and commercially, hitting those marks more as badges of achievement, personal evidence to the very fact of being able to do it, than label-mandated style shifts. In some ways, this makes their continued success all the more baffling. ![]() This led to the increasing scope of their records, from the roiling, stomping confidence of 2004’s Rubber Factory to the stadium-ringing grandeur of 2011’s El Camino. Ever since 2002’s The Big Come Up, The Black Keys have opted for the rough, inspired, and intuitive. ![]() Of course, what gets omitted equally from those dichotomies is the seriousness and simultaneous lack of preciousness that goes into making their music. This has been a source of either critical consternation or admiring approval, depending on the vantage point, a pair of energetic, historically-minded musicians or two white dudes from Ohio who once had promise and are now just trying to cash in. The Black Keys (Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney) are a band that, despite their size and their accolades and their popularity, have maintained a simple, well-worn style as much rooted in the past as it is acquiescent to the present strictures of what constitutes popular music.
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