Black Keys: Magic Potion

The Black Keys
Magic Potion
Nonesuch

Aside from Lebron James and the Goodyear Blimp, the Black Keys are Akron, Ohio’s highest flying export at the moment. Skinny and scruffy and shamelessly sans gimmick, the duo of singer/guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney debuted in 2002 with the ironically overlooked The Big Come Up— a raucous garage-blues album recorded in Carney’s tiny home studio in Akron.

Just four years later, the Keys’ steady ascension has put them on the fringe of the mainstream, first serving as opening acts for Beck and Radiohead and now delivering the much anticipated Magic Potion, their debut for Warner’s Nonesuch label.

This is the band’s fourth album (fifth if you count the recent Junior Kimbrough covers EP Chulahoma), and despite the benefits of a big label budget, it was recorded in the same Akron studio as their debut, with the same do-it-yourself, minimalist approach.

The sound remains distinctly loose and fuzz heavy, and the influences are still worn on their rolled-up sleeves, but Auerbach and Carney are doing what they do with greater skill than ever before. Their evolution is clear on tracks like “Your Touch” and “Strange Desire,” which pay homage as much to the pop sensibilities of the Kinks as the straight blues of Kimbrough and Buddy Guy. Carney, once only marginally more credible than Meg White, has grown more adventurous on the kit, and Auerbach’s appropriately pained lyrical gruffness has never sounded more soulful than it does on “The Flame.”

Despite wading in indie waters, the Black Keys have remained impressively free of pretension, focusing solely on making solid, glossless, electric blues for the kids and grown-ups alike. Magic Potion should solidify them in that business for a while.

(Andrew Clayman)

Published in Knoxville Voice, October 2006