The Black Keys: thickfreakness

People who distrust The White Stripes are likely to overrate The Black Keys, a guitar-and-drums blues-punk duo from Ohio that plays deep, loud roots music with a minimum of shtick. What those spoilsports miss is that Jack and Meg White are legitimate rock stars thanks mainly to Jack's offbeat sense of humor and left-field pop sensibility. So while pseudo-traditionalists may prefer The Black Keys' spooky mini-epics, most listeners would likely find it less rewarding to latch on to the group's occasionally thrilling, mostly tinny take on downbeat, Zeppelin-style heaviness. That doesn't mean it's hard to enjoy what The Black Keys' second album thickfreakness offers: a steamy, boozy, looser take on the amped-up miserablism of the band's overly rigid 2002 debut The Big Come Up. The new disc spends itself early, though. The opening title track offers singer-guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer-producer Patrick Carney's best stab yet at slow-grinding, passionately inarticulate midnight howling. They follow that up with the base jump-country of "Hard Row" and the Hendrix-style thunderstorming of "Set You Free," then hit a wall, only occasionally able to push their distortion-heavy, lo-fi lamentations beyond the minimal quality of "realness." The Black Keys and The White Stripes aren't the first modern-day duos to make a virtue of stripped-down necessity (see also House Of Freaks, Chickasaw Mudd Puppies, Flat Duo Jets, and more). But it's worth noting how the best neo-garage acts have found a way to plug the energy of the past into the current zeitgeist, rather than settling for The Black Keys' enthusiastic rehashing. This is more than just a matter of taste, ultimately. Rough, twangy blues grooves played at maximum volume are ideal for a beer-soaked outdoor festival, but the impact diminishes once the music is encoded onto the cold surface of a CD. The Black Keys' music sounds good, but until it transcends the same old borrowed words about lovers who leave in the night, it won't seem necessary.