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.
It doesn't take long to hear that Attack & Release is a clear departure from their earlier records, so Door #3 closes. The album isn't even in the same city as suck, so we can close Door #2. Peace in our lifetime? Close.
So where does that leave us?
It leaves us with 11 songs of Black Keys music that have been bathed in atmosphere by DangerMouse and a small army of additional collaborators. DM makes his presence felt and that may be enough to cause some of the hardheaded, diehard fans to hate the album and that's just silly. Besides, the success or failing of any album has much less to do with who produced it and more to do with what they produced. In short, it's about the songs.
Article comments
1 - Kevin Eagan
This album is just so good, I can't stop playing it. It's another that may make my list of best music of the year (we'll see how the rest of the year pans out).
2 - Josh Hathaway
Thanks for the comment, Kevin. I agree with you. It's hard for me to imagine this not making my list somewhere. I love this record.