Music Review: The Black Keys - Attack & Release

Written by Sombra Blanca 

Attack & Release is the fifth full-length album from Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney, a.k.a. The Black Keys. But it’s the first time the Akron, Ohio-based duo brought in production help from the outside, joining forces with the highly qualified (if somewhat unlikely choice of) Danger Mouse.

The album’s roots began as a project between the three and the late Ike Turner. Due to Turner’s death in December, the collaboration never reached fruition. Rather than let the songs pass away along with Turner, the Keys and Danger Mouse stuck with it and we are given an album that at points is slow, moody and spooky, other times straight ahead rock, but fused together with a base of blues ever-present in The Black Keys’ music.

The album heads north from the anchor of Mississippi sound heard in the duo’s first four albums, The Big Come Up, Thickfreakness, The Rubber Factory and Magic Potion, with the second and third aptly coming through the Oxford, Miss. record label Fat Possum. The new album heads north, that is, until we reach Memphis.

I’m not sure if all 11 of A&R’s songs were meant for the Turner collaboration. But with “So He Won’t Break” and “Oceans & Streams,” we have the two songs tied closest to the Memphis sound. Layering organs underneath Auerbach’s guitar and Carney’s drums, both songs call to mind the quintessential B.B. King tune, “The Thrill is Gone.” Pining for the days he used to “dream of oceans and streams,” Auerbach actually finishes that song’s chorus with the words “those days are gone.”

The nods to Beale Street, similar to the album’s other songs, are given some current touches by Danger Mouse, with the unexpected tinkle of a xylophone in “Break” and hand claps in “Oceans.” And that’s where his complimentary production is most felt. The Keys’ previous albums channeled the blues through Carney’s self-described “medium fidelity” production methods, giving the tunes a raw, fuzzy feel that others have also lumped in with garage rock. The sound is still there in parts, but the Mouse rounds it out with sonic additions seldom, if ever, heard in The Keys’ music before. The aforementioned handclaps and use of a flute on “Same Old Thing,” are but a couple of examples.

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