Music Review: The Black Keys - Attack & Release

I love when bands take chances. It's good for a band to abandon the comfortable ruts of the normal working environment and see what else might be out there. I don't always love the results of the experiments (U2's Pop comes quickly to mind) but I applaud anyone for taking a chance. If you don't occasionally fall flat on your face, you haven't stretched yourself at all.

The problem with experimentation is that artists we love want to/have to do it on our dime. They want to try something new and they want us to pay for it. That's fine and damn good when the experiment succeeds. It sucks ass when you fork over a handful of your limited dollars and get a teeming pile of shit in return. It sucks massive amounts of ass when your favorite band swings and misses, forcing you to wait two years for their return with the hope they'll right the ship then.

When I learned DangerMouse was producing a record for the Black Keys, it was clear Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney were serious about pushing their deliberately lo-fi, stripped-down sound in a drastically new direction. DangerMouse is about as far removed from sparse and organic as I am from rich and famous; talk about one of these things is not like the other.

I considered three likely outcomes of this experiment before I started listening to the album. The experiment could suck like a turbo-charged Hoover or it could create peace in our lifetime. It could also be like AC/DC's Ballbreaker or The Rolling Stones' Bridges To Babylon. In each case, the band paired themselves with one or more hot shot producers only to make records that substantively still sounded like the Stones and AC/DC — particularly in the case of the Rick Rubin-helmed Ballbreaker.

Article Author: Josh Hathaway

Josh Hathaway is a Sr. Music Editor for Blogcritics. He is formerly an award-winning journalist and broadcaster.

Visit Josh Hathaway's author page — Josh Hathaway's Blog