Live Review: The Black Keys

The Black Keys
Terminal 5
New York, NY
May 15, 2008
*Photo credit: Jason Bergman/RollingStone.com

On May 15th, blues-rock duo the Black Keys -- consisting of vocalist/guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney -- took the stage at the gigantic, all-new rock club, Terminal 5, in Midtown Manhattan, and gave the sold-out crowd of 4,500 nearly 90 minutes worth of stripped-down, back-to-the-basics, ass-shaking blues-rock.

From the set opener "Girl is on My Mind" to the encore closer "Till I Get My Way" -- both off the band's 2004 album Rubber Factory -- the duo had the eclectic crowd gyrating and bopping their heads back and forth in unison for a full hour-and-a-half without relenting. While a majority of the set's songs were pulled from Rubber Factory and Attack & Release (2008), the set also included many of their other live staples, such as "Set You Free" (Thickfreakness, 2002) and "Your Touch" (Magic Potion, 2006), which were both met with eruptive applause and excitement from the sold-out crowd.

The band performed 6 songs from this year's critically-acclaimed Attack & Release, including the album's first single "Strange Times" and the organ-driven "Oceans & Streams". Interestingly, these songs were not performed with the additional instrumentation added by producer Brian Burton (a.k.a. "Danger Mouse") for their studio version counterparts -- i.e., the ghostly background choir, banjos, electronics, and reed instruments which were all seen on the studio recordings. Instead, the band gave these songs the same raw, in-your-face blues-rock treatment they gave the rest of the songs on the set, without detracting from the basic texture of these songs. Auerbach and Carney -- who were positioned at the very front of the large stage throughout the entire set -- delivered with an intensity that would typically not be captured at such a humongous venue. Ultimately, despite the venue's settings, it still felt like just two guys playing rock 'n' roll the entire time -- no pretense, no tricks, no histrionics, just rock.

While the Black Keys have drawn the inevitable comparisons to blues-rock heroes the White Stripes and Led Zeppelin, they offer something more authentic and intimate than the others. Auerbach grew up on bluegrass music and spent his college years studying the works of Delta bluesmen Junior Kimbrough, R.L. Burnside, and Robert Johnson, and this influence is made more apparent than in other blues-rock outfits. Kimbrough's widow once personally told the band that they sound like Junior, a compliment which is quite telling of just how authentic this band's brand of blues-rock is -- instead of having the self-aware rock 'n' roll elitism of the bands they are compared to, the Black Keys are more at home with the humble, straightforward craftsmanship of their blues heroes.

Not only does their unrefined garage-rock sound seem like it would have fit in at any of the momentous late-60s rock festivals, but the duo's performance shows that their intimate sound could surely fit in anywhere from a smoky juke joint in Northwestern Mississippi to a small bar in Akron, Ohio to a three-level rock club in the heart of Manhattan.