As minimal two-man
blues-rock
bands go, this has to be near the top of the heap. The problem with minimal two-man
outfits (and there have been more of them than you think) is that they're, well, usually too minimal, with thin
garage
sound and a shortage of variety.
The Black Keys
' sound, impressively, is not too thin (though it is
garage-ish
), and there's enough deft incorporation of
funk
,
soul
, and
hard rock
into the harsh
juke joint-ish
core to avoid monotony. Most importantly,
Dan Auerbach
has a genuinely fine, powerful
blues
voice, sometimes approximating a white, slightly smoother
Howlin' Wolf
(particularly on the opener,
"Busted"
).
Auerbach
's a good guitarist, too, conjuring suitably harsh and busy (and sometimes heavily reverbed) riffs out of what sounds like a cheap but effectively harsh amp.
Patrick Carney
's drums might be the cruder component of this two-man band, but they keep the sound earthy without sounding sloppily
punkish
for the hell of it, as too many such groups searching for the
-
punk
fusion do. The very occasional insertion of
hip-hop
snippets seems neither here nor there, and the cover of
the Beatles
'
"She Said, She Said"
seems like an odd choice. But overall it's quite cool raunchy
electric blues
with more vigor and imagination than similarly raw, elderly Southern
juke joint
artists who came into vogue starting in the 1990s. And it's way fresher than the standard
bar band
blues-rockers
with slicker execution and more reverence for
cliches. ~ Richie Unterberger