The evidence is everywhere. They're amicable and straightforward in interviews. They frequently produce young, up-and-coming bands. Dan got hilariously drunk with JEFF the Brotherhood during a Pitchfork feature. Patrick occasionally rivals Jon Wurster as the most entertaining drummer on Twitter.
They just seem like all-around good guys at every possible opportunity. Which makes absolutely no sense.
The Black Keys are rock stars in the traditional sense, one that is rarely applicable given the current state of rock and roll. They sell records, they sell out venues, they fuck groupies (as Colbert unknowingly dragged out of them in a cringe-worthy interview). It's hard to name but a handful of bands that still fit that classic mold formed by the Beatles, the Stones, Led Zeppelin, the Who, and every band that came after them--save for the flash-in-the-pan "indie" superstars that can rarely manage a decent second album, let alone carry on for over a decade.
Radiohead, Queens of the Stone Age, Foo Fighters, Nickelback...not a whole lot more come to mind.
Radiohead seems to have been fighting this role ever since "Creep" first graced the alternative airwaves. In many ways, it's astounding that they've gained this level of popularity while still creating decidedly un-pop music, all while maintaining an almost cartoonish, thinly-veiled mystique.
Queens of the Stone Age are cock-rockers to the extreme, a warped fusion of Homme's stoner-rock roots and hair-metal excess that somehow lead to one of the best strings of albums any band has put out in the last 40 years.
The Foo Fighters are fueled almost solely by Dave Grohl, the prototypical frontman with a heart of gold, a never-ending well of hooks, and a damn fine rock star howl to remind you that he was once a member of the abrasive forebearers to the modern music industry.
And Nickelback just keeps making the same album year after year. They found a formula and they stuck to it. Can't hate on good old-fashioned capitalism.
And then there are the Black Keys, a couple of guys who went from recording staunchly lo-fi blues covers in an Akron basement to selling out Madison Square Garden, while somehow keeping their original spirit alive in the process.
Their early albums are stunning in their simplicity, combining roughneck blues riffs with a rock-solid, upbeat groove to create a sound that would eventually take over the world. After putting out four excellent albums in this style, they jumped ship in perhaps the most direct way possible--packing into a studio, and hiring the mastermind behind "Crazy" as their first producer ever.
Danger Mouse seemed like an absolutely insane choice at first glance, and the music reflects it, if only on the surface. I fully admit to turning off Attack & Release halfway through my first listen, my craving for that basement sound completely overwhelming my ability to appreciate what a solid album it was. In hindsight, it probably is their weakest album--just due to the songs, not Danger Mouse's production.
When Attack & Release was followed by a brief hiatus, it seemed like the Black Keys were destined to fade away like so many other bands before them. They had a good run, they decided to experiment for an album, and it broke them. Such is life. Instead, they decided to reconcile and launch a comeback, recording their best album ever in the process.
It's hard to understate just how great Brothers is, and what a huge step forward it was from both Attack & Release and their basement albums. No matter how good their previous albums were, you couldn't escape the fact that they were outright pillaging the music of Junior Kimbrough and Howlin' Wolf. It was great music, without a doubt, but it was far from original. Brothers represented an enormous leap forward on every possible level--style, songwriting, production, hooks, and most importantly, the incorporation of their numerous influences.
No longer were they throwing riffs on top of someone else's template. They were now creating a template of their own, fusing delta blues, Detroit soul, pitch-black Sly Stone funk, and effortless pop sensibilities to arguably put them on the same level as some of those influences.
"Tighten Up" still gets a lot of attention when discussing Brothers, and for good reason. Danger Mouse took a throwaway session with the band, an afterthought toward the end of recording, and crafted one of the best singles of the 21st century. I still listen to it frequently, and I still love it just as much as the first time I heard it.
The rest of the album, though, is just as good. "Everlasting Light," "Howlin' For You," "Unknown Brother"--the album is loaded with excellent tracks, flowing from one vibrant style to another, bearing little resemblance to the factory-line riffage of their Akron days.
(Confession time: I haven't actually listened to El Camino. I hear it's also very good, and it's on my list. My very...very long list.)
It's tempting to divide the Black Keys' career in two, marking a sonic divide between Magic Potion and Attack & Release. And to a degree, it's a plausible one. They started working with producers, they diversified their sound, they stopped relying on Dan's riffs--this is all very true. But it's simply not accurate to draw such a fine line separating their career in two.
Compare their career to that of the Mountain Goats. They too had a similar split, both in sound and ideology. John's semi-fleshed-out "bi-fi" manifesto marked the first decade or so of his career, when he rarely strayed from his patented "boombox flow," the mechanical hum of his tape recorder incorporated into his rapid-fire songwriting, often resulting in the release of truly cringe-worthy material. John himself disparages his early songs as often as possible, seemingly performing them only for the enjoyment of his fans.
From there, he made the jump to a studio, focused his songwriting instead of hitting record everytime he had an interesting thought, and the addition of non-guitar instruments for the first time. He briefly considered changing the name of his band at the onset of this shift, and in many ways, he did create a new band, regardless of its name.
The Black Keys have a consistency that pervades their music from beginning to end--one that the Mountain Goats do not. They may not record albums in 14 hours anymore, but the same blues style that enveloped The Big Come Up is still readily apparent in Brothers. Try finding any similarities between Taboo IV and All Eternals Deck. (I'll save you the effort--there are none.)
Their sound evolved as they grew in popularity, but that monumental, rock star-asshole shift simply didn't happen. Those early albums sketched out a blues-centric sound that was slowly filled in over the years. The Big Come Up was a series of outlines and rough caricatures, and Brothers was the complete, bombastic collage you knew they always had to have in them.
For their efforts, they've graduated to full-blown rock star status, by most any criteria. Except, somehow, they're not complete assholes.
