The Beat Surrender

I’m a relative novice when it comes to the delightful blues-garage-rock charms of The Black Keys, despite them being around for a number of years and growing with each release musically and in terms of the audience that they now play to.

In fact it was about eighteen months to two years ago when I first found them on my radar, a lad at work came back in from HMV with a CD album all excited. The album was The Black Keys last album and when he described it to me I thought i’d go off and do a bit oflistening myself.

The album in question was Magic Potion and I instantly liked it, although you could see similarities to The White Stripes (although really thats vice versa) the Black Keys had a purer blues feel to them, it didn’t feel as forced as Jack and Megs efforts although that may in part be due to the fact that they haven’t been tarnished with the same level of commercial success.

Which is why it will be interesting to see how Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney develop after this album has exposed them to a wider audience. The fact that Danger Mouse has produced it (brilliantly again) is bound to gain them attention from other people that wouldn’t normally stumble on a Black Keys album, it’s just hoped that it doesn’t spoil them.

The signs are good here. The collaboration originally came about for an Ike Turner album which the duo were going to be the backing band for, once Ike Turner died though they decided to take the project on themselves and run with it for their next album…and so Attack & Release was born.

After a gentle opening which has a dusty, countrified twang the opening song bursts into life and their trademark blues-rock sound reverberates around the room. I Got Mine starts with massive riffs that continue throughout the song, with the vocal combining to give a real head shaking blues track.

They don’t rest on the laurels of these opening tracks though and continue to mix things up throughout, which is of real credit to them, Psychotic Girl has a real funky guitar line and a backing vocal, Lies is a slow grove with the lyrics “i’ve got a thorn where my heart should be and nothing I do will make you love me”, it’s heart wrenching stuff alright.

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