Previously: The Black Keys – Brothers

The Black Keys were ubiquitous in 2010. Liven up your next TV party with the Black Keys drinking game: every time you hear a Black Keys song on TV, take a number of drinks equal to how many albums ago it’s from. Bonus drink if the song is heard in a context other than a commercial. When Captain Beefheart died they even got mention in a couple news articles about it for having covered a few of his songs. It’s possibly a bit much.

In their early days, if you were paying attention, you might have noticed that they tended to have better songs than the average among their peers, but generally you could be forgiven for having overlooked The Black Keys among the glut of two-piece gritty-blues-rock outfits that seemed to appear in the wake of the sudden success of The White Stripes (about whom I’m obligated to mention their breakup, but presumably you already heard about it). Then you might have started to notice that they seemed to put out an awful lot of albums. Turns out they were getting better with each one. They began to really set themselves apart from the crowd in 2008 on Attack & Release by trading in blues orthodoxy for 1960s R&B/soul elements that give Dan Auerbach more room to use his smooth, agile vocals and stretch his lyric writing, and those new degrees of freedom allowed them to put tremendous emotional depth into the songs. Adding in a bit of extra instrumentation on record didn’t hurt either. Having established this formula, they pretty much stuck with it in 2010 for Brothers, and delivered one of the best albums of the year yet again.

(As for 2009, Dan Auerbach released the excellent, somewhat overlooked solo album Keep It Hid — it pretty much sounds like a Black Keys record with some folk leanings, definitely worth checking out.)

My work continues to be busy, so I haven’t been writing a lot here, but I do manage to find time to post various links of interest to the Centipede Farm Facebook page. I figured I should pop in here quick and talk about music things I’ve been to or done lately. Leah and I went to see The Black Keys at the Val Air with busted AC, the place was packed and probably 110 degrees. I looked like I’d been in some kind of sweat-filled dunk tank. They played wonderfully though. I’ve seen some bands tend to play their songs faster live than they sound on record; the Black Keys, at least that night, played things a little bit slower, which I think suited the atmosphere of the sweltering August night. It was pretty rock and roll.

I saw the diva of mom-glam Leslie Hall, with her band Leslie And The Ly’s, bring their celebration of all things snazzy to a rainy Tuesday morning at the Iowa State Fair. Considering the weather and the early hour, they drew a respectable crowd and really pulled out all the stops when it came to silly props and between-song skits. Hanging quilts, a giant cat, and a tractor called Glitter Plow. Grace plays drums, the only live instrument they use in the show, as everything else is on a laptop other than vocals, and I can’t stress enough the level of skill it takes to be able to stay on beat with something prerecorded like that. Grace kicks ass. They’ll be at something called Inglert in Iowa City on September 16.

We did two Why Make Clocks shows this past weekend, and there were actually people at them. Saturday night’s show was at Vaudeville Mews with Noah’s Ark With A Spaceship, a great band we previously met and played with in Omaha where they’re from. They make a loud raucous guitar-noise-pop sound that I’d place in the lineage of Swervedriver. They’re on Slumber Party Records where they’re labelmates with Thunder Power and Outlaw Con Bandana among others. We got to hang out with them some before and after the show as well, and they are a fun bunch of cats. Some variation on what used to be called The Chatty Cathys opened, a group of young fellows making a Pavementy kind of racket, and they were quite enjoyable. In between was another very youthful outfit (14 to 16 years old, I believe), The Seed Of Something, which involves Dan’s wife Kim’s son Jasper and is also currently sharing drummer Will Tarbox with Why Make Clocks while they look for another. They’re really good and we’d like to see them keep at it, so if you know a kid around Des Moines who plays drums well and likes driving indie rock sounds, get in touch.

The following night both Why Make Clocks and The Seed Of Something played a double-birthday-party show at Des Moines Social Club along with The Atudes, Christopher The Conquered, and Poison Control Center. The birthdays in question were of our very own Dan, and of Pat from PCC, both of which were on Monday. Everyone put on a great show, though the sound in the Black Box Theater room of the DMSC was as usual a bit off. Friendly vibes abounded. PCC continue their “Never Ending Tour” tonight at The Slowdown in Omaha, and tomorrow night at The Lift in Dubuque , then a whole bunch of other places. I’d suggest checking the lengthy list of dates listed on their MySpace because chances are if you’re reading this, you’ll have an opportunity or two to see them in the next few months.

Finally, just last night, we did the second-ever show of the reunited Fetal Pig, opening up for the amazing Mahogany Frog from Winnipeg. MF first came to our attention when Why Make Clocks ended up playing with them at Big V’s in St. Paul. We liked them a lot and told them to get in touch if they ever thought of coming to play in Des Moines. They do mostly instrumental psychedelic prog-rock epics with lots of keyboards. It’s partly a recreation of prog circa ’72, but also very modern; I caught a lot about their set that I think fans of stuff like Battles would get into. Hell, anybody can get into stuff this good. While they were playing I kept thinking to myself they might be the best band in the universe.

Leah got me a bag of gummy centipedes!

Tonight: Ember Schrag, Pennyhawk, Ron Wax, and Nuclear Rodeo at Ames Progressive, 8pm.

Got hold of a promo download of the new Black Keys album Brothers and have been giving it a listen just now.

I think we’re way past the point now of talking about the Black Keys emerging from the shadow of The White Stripes — two bands, both guitar-drums duos working in a garage-blues milieu, and having similar-yet-opposite names, but one getting their mainstream (whatever that is these days) acknowledgment a bit ahead of the other. The Black Keys distinguished themselves in a big way with their most recent album Attack & Release as they moved stylistically a few degrees from raucous garage-blues towards more of a slow-burn soul sound that I think is especially well-suited to Dan Auerbach’s voice, sort of the Paul Rodgers to Jack White’s Robert Plant. Fans of Attack & Release will be happy to know that that stylistic progression didn’t end with the concept of writing songs for Ike Turner; Brothers continues forward with that songwriting vein, even as it moves a little bit backwards in production and arrangements toward the rawness of earlier Black Keys albums. The combination works well, and thought it’s hard to say after one listen, this could the the best Black Keys album yet.

Anyway not to beat the White Stripes thing to death, especially since I think I like the Black Keys better lately — but the reason I even bring it up is that Auerbach does start this album out with something new for him that has the potential to bring that reference back into play: the “Blue Orchid”-ish falsetto in which he sings the album’s opener, “Everlasting Light.” While probably unnecessary, it’s still an interesting new thing to hear from this band, and shows that they continue to experiment with their sound. He brings it back in a few well-chosen moments later in the album, but not many, and more generally explores the higher end of his vocal range on a few of the numbers here. I love Auerbach’s voice, and I love that this many albums and years in he’s still doing new things with it.

I’m not going to tell you where I found the whole album, set to be released May 18, because of the weird legal shit going on in the music game these days, but The Black Keys’ website should have a couple songs up for download and you can find out how to pre-order the “deluxe edition,” yet another of those music-business gimmicks that’s big these days, from there was well. And before you ask, no, I wasn’t at their show in Iowa City a couple weeks ago. Really just didn’t have that kind of cash to throw around at the time. As Cake said, how do you afford your rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle?