The Black Keys Shred at ACL Studios [Review]
Regardless of a music-filled ACL weekend, hungry fans lined up early for The Black Keys ACL Studio show as anxious as ever. Friday’s festival performance and Stubb’s sold-out after show on Saturday revealed that The Black Keys are a hot ticket.
A packed audience eagerly waited as the soft spoken duo took the stage promptly at 8 pm. Pat Carney slumped comfortably into his drum set as Dan Auerbach strapped himself into his guitar and stepped to the mic addressing the audience with a simple, “Hello.” Then, with a seductive, snarling riff, Auerbach plunged into “Thickfreakness,” the title track off of their 2002 debut. The song selection made for the perfect introduction for the recording session, as many long time fans were introduced to the band by the same gnarly sound eight years ago.
Their bluesy garage-rock filled the small studio while heads bopped and cameras popped. The brothers brought business to the stage as they kicked things off with old favorites and banged out, “Girl is On My Mind,” “Breaks” and “I’ll Be Your Man,” solid hits off of Rubber Factory and The Big Come Up. Auerbach’s naturally raspy howl and his raw guitar riffs easily translate the bluesy sentiment of their lyrics and finds a perfect balance with Carney’s controlled percussion that ranges from a slow strut to a frantic gallop without a hitch.
Within a few songs Carney lost his thick-black rimmed glasses, broke numerous drumsticks and showed off some impressive musically-induced face distortion as he relentlessly hammered away. Auerbach similarly drifts into a zone of his own. His eyes glaze over, his head shakes as he moves around on stage and his vocals are laced with an intangible raw emotion. Watching them feed off of one another is revealing of their unwavering musical chemistry. These Akron, Ohio boys have been playing together since childhood and they know exactly what they’re doing.
Before launching into new songs off Brothers, Auerbach invited Leon Michels and Nick Movshon to join them onstage playing keyboard/percussion and bass, respectively. They quickly dropped into “Everlasting Light,” showcasing Auerbach’s yearning falsetto and continued with over half of their new tracks and “Chop and Change” for which Auerbach simultaneously played maraca and guitar. Drawing near to the end of their set, they slowed down “Ten Cent Pistol” with a soft, tapping drumbeat laced between swinging guitar solos and then switched gears into a funk-drenched, bass-heavy “Sinister Kid.”
While the duo hardly bantered with the crowd between songs, Auerbach modestly thanked the audience for attending and briefly spoke of fond childhood recollections of watching tapes of Gillian Welch’s performance on ACL with his grandparents in St. Augustine, FL. The story made the cozy setting all the more intimate before the band reduced back to the original duo for the final two songs, a heavy-hitting, “Your Touch” and “I Got Mine,” which left adoring fans on their feet.
The duo are certainly getting much deserved fan-love and critical acclaim following the success of this year’s Brothers. With six LPs and two EPs since 2002, theirs is a well practiced dynamic that has certainly established The Black Keys as well-respected musical heavy-weights.
