The Black Keys

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Feeling heartsick from love’s tumult, sweating bullets in the middle of the night, drinking lightning from a corn liquor bottle, sitting in a room whose walls are so blue they look black, digging into the joy-and-pain double helix of existence and finding heavy soul, kicking out a blues rock rumpus in search of salvation…this is the electrifying world of The Black Keys and their sophomore album thickfreakness.
2002 was a heckuva year for The Black Keys (Dan Auerbach, vocals and guitar; Patrick Carney, drums and production). The true-school two-piece came roaring straight of out Akron, Ohio with a debut album The Big Come-Up on the tiny Alive label that garnered barely-contained raves in Rolling Stone, Spin, The Village Voice and MOJO. One listen to The Big Come Up—a startling raw slab of juke-joint blues—validated the band’s rapid ascent from playing for no money on the bottom of the bill at Cleveland’s Beachland Tavern to selling out blistering headline dates and being invited to open for the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and (on New Year’s Eve) elder Ohio statesmen Guided By Voices.
With all the righteous acclaim, the band was inevitably enticed by big league offers like so many glasses of carrot juice dangled at the end of an electric cattle prod. But after the results of a trial session in a swank California recording studio proved thoroughly unsatisfying, the band hooked up with Fat Possum Records and reconnoitered back in Akron to craft their Fat Possum debut. Descending to the dank cellar of Carney’s Minimum Wage Studio, the pair dove into 14 straight hours of recording. With no one else in the studio, and Carney dashing back and forth between his drumkit and the mixing board, the two-man immersion tank/musical incubator came alive. “Nothing like being in your own basement surrounded by your own garbage,” says Carney (who incidentally is the nephew of Tom Waits’ longtime sax sideman Ralph Carney).
thickfreakness is the glorious result—grimier, grittier and more down in the groove than its predescesor. From the get-go it’s plain that there will be no sophomore slump-chumpin’ from the Black Keys. The album-opening title track combusts as Carney lays heavily into his hi-hat, giving Auerbach wide berth to bust a blinding duck-and-cover riff and with a roar let both his lover and all listeners know: “Gonna take your hand/ make you understand!”
thickfreakness is indeed an album of love songs. But this is no pattycake kissfest—these are blues about love fraught with acrimony where blind devotion makes it impossible to let go. Bear witness to the choogling barnburner “No Trust” where Auerbach’s patience is about to snap: “She want to get out of the car/ in the middle of the road/ her screamin’ and hollerin’/ it’s getting mighty old.” Auerbach’s in-command cry is so soulful it begs disbelief that he’s only in his early 20s. “How did I learn to sing like that? A lot of imitation before I let loose,” he says. Loose as hell but tight as a nut—that’s The Black Keys version of “Have Love Will Travel” (which they learned off an old record by The Sonics) which stands as thickfreakness’s nod to the R&B and garage rock that’s intermingled in The Black Keys main vein: the blues.
So it is that Fat Possum Records and The Black Keys are some kind of predestined fit. The Mississippi-based label has for over a decade been recording undiscovered, unspoiled country bluesmen like T-Model Ford and Junior Kimbrough. thickfreakness was mastered in Memphis, a half hour north Kimbrough’s Holly Springs, Mississippi hometown. “Junior Kimbrough’s Sad Days Lonely Nights was the first Fat Possum album I bought,” says Auerbach. “I was listening to it as a white kid in Ohio at (school) and got absolutely hooked on it. Junior’s grooves put me into a trance. Everyone thought I was nuts.” Auerbach’s insane allegiance prompted him to drive into rural Mississippi to find his hero. “I went down to Holly Springs three times to meet Junior but he was sick each time. Auerbach did however strike up a friendship with T-Model Ford and visit the legendary Junior’s Juke Joint where he drank bootleg liquor and heard Junior’s son play. “I remember a poster on the wall with a crude Pinnochio drawing that said Keep Your Nose Out Of Other People’s Business,” laughs Auerbach. The Juke Joint has since burned down and Junior has died, but thickfreakness is anchored by a version of Kimbrough’s “Everywhere I Go.” Carney rolls the beat out slow like it was a pig on a spit while Auerbach, picking his guitar with only thumb and pointer finger, carries the line “everywhere I go/ I’m gonna think of you” through an open flame.
With thickfreakness in the can, The Black Keys staved off release-date impatience and fled a brutal Ohio winter by heading out on the road opening by invitation for ruling girl rockers Sleater-Kinney. Taking the stage of dapper theaters in worn jeans and hob-nail boots, The Black Keys rocked crowds in excess of 1000 and proved their biggest come-up is yet to come. thickfreakness’s “Set You Free” became their set’s centerpiece, rousing crowds (most of whom had never heard the band before) into delirium. The song’s full-force liberation features Carney playing his drums with the locomotive drive of John Henry pick-axing through a mountain, and the song’s white knuckle break is funk at its most raw and thrilling.
On the Sleater-Kinney tour, The Black Keys were compared to Blue Cheer’s awesome assault and the soul stylings of Otis Redding. Yet the band has something all their own, made with love in Akron, Ohio. Famous for fostering inconoclasts like Devo and Crissy Hynde of the Pretenders, the town known as The Rubber Capital Of The World has been a haven for Carney and Auerbach, who both grew up and still live in there.
Akron has allowed The Black Keys to remain unaffected by the creepy tides of fashion, to develop at their own pace, and serendipitously to bloom at a time when genuine soul is in high demand. Sure, it’s hip to be a two-piece, the duo thing is huge right now; everyone’s looking for the new Laurel & Hardy (not to be confused with the next Abbott & Costello), but if the bass-less guitar/drums set-up has become common currency, it’s the uncommon value that always shines thought. On thickfreakness, the Black Keys pay musical dividends up front and in the back. So come on…

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