The air is laden with inevitability with me for this selection. It’s been lingering for five years or more admittedly, from their earliest days The Black Keys have been peddling a brand of Blues-Rock that’s way ahead of their contemporaries, theirs being a far purer grain than even the old hands can summon in the modern age. But there’s been more to it than that of late; throughout 2009, with the exceptional solo album by Dan Auerbach and the incredible Rap collaboration project Blakroc, there gathered the distinct sense that something special was stirring in the Black Keys camp. With the album ‘Brothers’ all that mouth watering anticipation finally delivered us a classic. Everything they’ve ever aimed for is realised here, that is if the aim was to conjure the moment in the late 60s when Blues was psychedelicised and bursting with limitless electricity fuelled possibility. When Muddy Waters recorded one of Chess Records defining albums in ‘Electric Mud’ (and an album that the early Hip-Hop pacemakers frequently turned to incidentally) and Howlin’ Wolf put out the album from which the Black Keys have parodied on their own sleeve here. But if the solid execution of finding that rare groove wasn’t enough, the package is completed with the songs, of which every single one is a winner. In a perfect world the sultry, falsetto sung ‘The Only One’ would be rotated by every credible Soul DJ the world over, Jack White would be busy taking notes on the ‘Howlin’ For You’ fuzz guitar and ‘Tighten Up’ could be basking in the glory of being one of the singles of the year. There’s nothing to say the Black Keys won’t go even further from this point on but at least, with ‘Brothers’, they have already rubbed shoulders with perfection. Don’t miss out on this one!Friday 31 December 2010
ALBUMS OF THE YEAR 2010 No. 2 – THE BLACK KEYS – Brothers
The air is laden with inevitability with me for this selection. It’s been lingering for five years or more admittedly, from their earliest days The Black Keys have been peddling a brand of Blues-Rock that’s way ahead of their contemporaries, theirs being a far purer grain than even the old hands can summon in the modern age. But there’s been more to it than that of late; throughout 2009, with the exceptional solo album by Dan Auerbach and the incredible Rap collaboration project Blakroc, there gathered the distinct sense that something special was stirring in the Black Keys camp. With the album ‘Brothers’ all that mouth watering anticipation finally delivered us a classic. Everything they’ve ever aimed for is realised here, that is if the aim was to conjure the moment in the late 60s when Blues was psychedelicised and bursting with limitless electricity fuelled possibility. When Muddy Waters recorded one of Chess Records defining albums in ‘Electric Mud’ (and an album that the early Hip-Hop pacemakers frequently turned to incidentally) and Howlin’ Wolf put out the album from which the Black Keys have parodied on their own sleeve here. But if the solid execution of finding that rare groove wasn’t enough, the package is completed with the songs, of which every single one is a winner. In a perfect world the sultry, falsetto sung ‘The Only One’ would be rotated by every credible Soul DJ the world over, Jack White would be busy taking notes on the ‘Howlin’ For You’ fuzz guitar and ‘Tighten Up’ could be basking in the glory of being one of the singles of the year. There’s nothing to say the Black Keys won’t go even further from this point on but at least, with ‘Brothers’, they have already rubbed shoulders with perfection. Don’t miss out on this one!
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