4/5
Songs In The Keys Of Life
Sinatra has a sound that is so signature you could just let his whole playlist play for hours, days maybe, and it would blend so seamlessly and beautifully together. Getting richer, like wine, as it ages. That's just the great American songbook for you. Like rock and roll. And now that one of our generation greats, The Black Keys, have hit more than a dozen albums, you can say the same for these Ohio bandsmen and kids from Akron. They've never left it that long between albums, since their 'Big Come Up' in 2002 (one year before their fellow Akron native, LeBron James, own dynamic debut). Maybe a calendar, or a couple. Only really since their big-three of 'Brothers' (2010), 'El Camino' (2011) and 2014's 'Turn Blue'. But four years after that, it's been an onslaught, like an 'Everlasting Love'. 'Let's Rock' (2019), 'Delta Kream' (2021), 'Dropout Boogie' (2022), all getting us through COVID, before last year's bowler-rama of the 'Ohio Players'.
Now just a calendar and change after that Big Lebowski with the likes of Beck, Black Keys are back. 'No Rain, No Flowers' waters their thirteenth album that is luck for us this New Music Friday. Yet, you would have forgiven the iconic duo of Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney if they perhaps wanted to take a brief break. Like the greatest rollers of this rock generation could. "We got f####d. I'll let you all know how so it doesn't happen to you," Carney claimed in a now deleted tweet after the Keys fired their management last year. Now, this Warner Record recorded in Nashville's Easy Eye Sound studio marks changes in more ways than one. Marking their first collaboration with hit song maker Rick Nowels (he's not far off a century of classics on the Billboard 100), multi-instrumentalist Daniel Tashian and super-producer Scott Storch, who was so hip-hop in the early 2000s he once cut the roof off of a Rolls-Royce to make it a drop-top. All for the beautiful bloom of these flowers, we need, like the deserts need the rain.
Rain and flowers will give you a North American fall tour from these brothers in arms, straight out of their dire straits. Feeling refreshed for a half-hour record of all-power, there are plenty of singles to get the crowd ready before the classic comes into play. The opening title-track. The second track and first single, 'The Night Before'. The beautiful 'Babygirl'. The moving 'Man On A Mission', for a pair on a rejuvenated one. And the outstanding 'On Repeat', that will be exactly that, like the Spotify shuffling of this band's definitive discography as a perfect playlist, with no need for edit, it's so epic. But like their last few records, the Keys finish strong like the late, great Mister Cee (Scott will know what we're talking about). The King James, D-Wade and Chris Bosh like big-three of the introspective 'All My Life', the atmospheric 'A Little Too High' and the gleam of a new 'Neon Moon' ("When you’re at the crossroads/And you don’t know where to turn/And everything is backwards/From all the bridges that you burned/Don’t let yourself get down too long/‘Cause a change is coming soon/You can always find your way back home/By the light of the neon moon") really takes you home.
Black and white like a Black Rebel Motorcycle Club album artwork confirms this as a classic for a band that reach back to their raw roots. The leather clad and bare chested figure on the front almost looks like Brian Fallon from fellow legendary luminaries, The Gaslight Anthem, as a teardrop tattoo hangs from his eye like the loose cigarette from his lips. Whereas a red rose, the only colour on the cover, wrapped with the notion of 'No Rain, No Flowers' hits his sternum like a thorn. There's no more in Auerbach or Carney's side, however, as The Keys play once again like Sam for the record. On 'Down To Nothing', Auerbach still searches for hope in this love and life, singing, "Behind the clouds/Beyond the stars/Above the crowds/In some lonely bar/I’ll meet you there." All until his muse will 'Kiss It' better. It's the kind of haunted heart that will 'Make You Mine' like, "I’ve been alone/So f#####g long/I’ve cried the tears of a clown/I need a break from my mistakes/But that’s the price of starting over/How many times is one time too many?" A yearly yearn that burns. Just like Black's everlasting light. The reign is still here. So give them their flowers. TIM DAVID HARVEY.
Playlist Picks: 'Babygirl', 'All My Life', 'Neon Moon'.
Spin This: The Black Keys - 'Ohio Players'.
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