Emerging Artist:

The Black Keys

Published April 25, 2008

The Akron, Ohio-based duo The Black Keys is well known for its concentrated, hermetic approach to recording, hunkering down with rudimentary equipment in an unfinished basement or commandeering the floor of a vacant local rubber factory to create terse but soulful rock that seems to have time-traveled into the pair's amps from some long-ago radio show.

However, guitarist-vocalist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney now admit they were ready for a change of scene—as well as some company. So when they got the opportunity to work with Grammy Award-nominated producer-musician-provocateur Danger Mouse, a/k/a Brian Burton (Gnarls Barkley, The Gorillaz, The Grey Album), they agreed, for the first time, to leave their familiar environs.

Danger Mouse fit right in, too. Says Dan, "He came in as our collaborator. Brian does hip-hop, but he likes rock and roll, obscure sixties psychedelic stuff, and we listen to a lot of that too. So he was pretty easy to get along with. Brian has a real ear for melody and arrangement, and that was a big part of this record, his making suggestions about the arrangements."

Elemental Rock & Roll

With Danger Mouse, The Black Keys didn’t veer uncomfortably far from the elemental rock & roll territory they’d mined so effectively on previous albums like their 2006 Nonesuch debut, Magic Potion, or their Fat Possum discs, Rubber Factory (2004) and Thickfreakness (2003). But they were definitely in a mood to experiment on Attack & Release.

Dan and Patrick were childhood buddies who grew up in the same Akron neighborhood and attended the same schools. But they didn't recognize their natural musical affinity until well into high school when they started jamming together with other aspiring musician friends, who they soon ditched. Early demos of The Black Keys featured a third member, who played a moog bass, but he didn't last long either, and they subsequently carried on as a duo. The Black Keys have been able to make something ferociously noisy, deceptively melodic, and surprisingly sincere out of the simplest tools and riffs.

"I'm more pleased with the sound of this record than any we've ever made," Pat concludes. "Rather than mask things in, like, a low-fi fog, we can make things sound big and f-ed up at the same time."

Bio by Michael Hill