Review: The Black Keys at Wells Fargo Center
No wonder Jack White hates the Black Keys. Just like the White Stripes, the duo that White used to play in with his drumming ex wife Meg,
No wonder Jack White hates the Black Keys.
Just like the White Stripes, the duo that White used to play in with his drumming ex wife Meg,
The Black Keys are a rock tandem formed around the turn of the millennium with the cojones to attempt to build a mass audience in a hip-hop-pop-country-electro world the hopelessly old fashioned way: by playing the blues.
The Black Keys - guitarist-singer Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney, Akron, Ohio natives who, like White, who has frequently disparaged them publicly, now reside in Nashville - have never managed to make music as eccentric, arty or awesome as, say "Seven Nation Army." But they have gotten increasingly effective in creating accomplished superbly crafted guitar records - the new Turn Blue is their eighth - that have transformed them from a scuzz-rock club band to arena headliners big enough to fill the Wells Fargo Center, which they did on Saturday night.
On stage these days, the Black Keys aren't a duo at all. Auerbach and Carney were backed by bass player and harmony singer Richard Swift and keyboardist John Wood, who squiggled out the irresistible keyboard lick on Turn Blue single "Fever." Guitar-tech Dan Johnson also joined in for an encore that included the trippy, delicately wrought "Weight Of Love," and closing "Little Black Submarines," from El Camino, the packed-with-hits 2011 album cemented the band's status as unlikely pop stars.
The auxiliary musicians filled out the sound nicely, but what kept the intergenerational date night crowd on its feet for an hour and 45 minutes was the quality of the songcraft. It's the sonic details that hold your attention with the Black Keys, not surprisingly since Auerbach is a Grammy winning producer who has helmed impressive records of late by Tuareg guitarist Bombino, New Orleans gris gris master Dr. John and noir chanteuse Lana Del Rey.
There's the pedal steel lick that Auerbach turned up tension with on the John Fogerty-style ramble "Gotta Get Away," the whistled intro that gives way to a soul groove in "Tighten Up," and "Radar Love"-guitar lick and arena-ready singalong chorus of "Lonely Boy."
The Black Keys never astonish with originality or personality, and sometimes their music can seem nothing more than a kinetic pastiche of their influences. ("Little Submarines," apes Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" to such a degree it's surprising legal action hasn't been taken, though maybe Led Zep, egregious thieves themselves, are too shamefaced to protest.)
Kinetic it is, however, and from their wicked cover of the trad blues "Leavin' Trunk" to the snarling "Your Touch," from 2006's Magic Potion, the band's bruising sound set bodies in motion from the start and gathered momentum as the evening progressed.
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