Listening to the Black Keys’ prior albums before taking in Brothers, you can appreciate how far this duo had come without sacrificing a single strand of their core sonic makeup.
What started out as a crunchy distillation of Howlin’ Wolf and Junior Kimbrough was now broadening out to soak in elements of Tony Joe White, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and Crazy Horse. But the Black Keys didn’t merely dwell in the sounds of the ’70s. They reveled in them, recreating those sounds in what by then had already become their own imprint.
The songs from Brothers, released on May 18, 2010, took on a psychedelic shimmer, but modern advances allowed you hear what’s happening behind the paisley curtain. Except for “Tighten Up,” Danger Mouse was not at the mixing board on this one, as he was for the prior Attack And Release. But the Black Keys took the lessons learned about tone and textures and amazingly, even improved upon it.
Every moment had an element of fuzz, but spun a variety of tales. “Black Mud” was a haunting recasting of Neil Young’s “Down By the River,” complete with aching lead guitar lines – but no vocals. The big swagger of the spare funk tune “Sinister Kid” certainly had them: “I’ve gotta tortured mind and my blade is sharp, a bad combination in the dark.”
The Black Keys still showed strong fealty to the blues in Delta-derived numbers like “Next Girl” and “She’s Lone Gone.” They also tackled Jerry Butler’s 1968 hit “Never Give You Up” in a respectful rendition that sounds like it was recorded about the same time as the original.
Dan Auerbach’s chameleon vocals and rootsy songcraft were as effective as ever on Brothers, and Patrick Carney’s sturdy but nuanced backbeats also served to make each track memorable. Six albums in, the Black Keys just continued to get better.
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