Listening to the cool, glassy No Rain, No Flowers, you’d never suspect that the Black Keys are on a mission to rebound from their annus horribilis, the kind of year that gives rock bands nightmares.
It wasn’t supposed to be that way. The Black Keys set up their 2024 to be triumphant, releasing the glitzed-out Ohio Players with plans to tour North American arenas through the summer. They launched the album by saturating SXSW 2024: giving a keynote, holding multiple showcases, and premiering Jeff Dupre’s documentary, This Is a Film About the Black Keys. But then, nothing went right. Ohio Players made a lackluster debut on the Billboard 200—landing at No. 26, it was their weakest showing for a full-length since their 2006 album peaked at No. 95. The band cancelled its arena shows within a month of their announcement, reportedly due to soft ticket sales. And within weeks, they had also fired a management team spearheaded by industry legend (and Eagles manager) Irving Azoff. Drummer Patrick Carney vented on the site formerly known as Twitter: “We got fucked. I’ll let you all know how so it doesn’t happen to you.”
Carney never delved into the details, later telling Rolling Stone, “You got to take it on the chin sometimes to move forward, and that’s kind of what the last year was for us.” In that same interview, guitarist Dan Auerbach explained that the title No Rain, No Flowers derived from “an expression that I’d heard … that seemed to sum up how we envisioned ourselves getting over the situation that we’d just been through.” Carney hammered that point home: “We got a little bit complacent with the business shit because we’ve been so busy with the creative shit,” he said; it was a reminder “to pay attention to both things.”
From a certain angle, No Rain, No Flowers does find the Black Keys shaking off complacency and venturing into new territory, leaving their gnarled blues-punk back in the garage. A key component in that expansion is the band’s decision to invite a host of outside musicians into the studio. They did this on Ohio Players, too, working with like-minded crate diggers including Beck, Dan the Automator, and Noel Gallagher. But the pedigree of the collaborators here is decidedly pop: Daniel Tashian, best known for his work on Kacey Musgraves’ Grammy-winning Golden Hour; veteran songwriter Rick Nowels, who has written with with everyone from Stevie Nicks to Lana Del Rey; and Scott Storch, a hip-hop producer whose commercial heyday is nearly 20 years gone.
No strangers to hip-hop—they took a busman’s holiday as BlakRoc in 2009—or studio experimentation, the Black Keys historically have used those modes to chase psychedelic dreams. That’s not the case here, though. Instead, they deploy electronic effects as mere texture, lending cheerful melodies a supple, diffident sense of style. The cool assurance of the production pushes the album’s sound squarely into the middle of the road. Aside from the grinding guitar riff that keeps “Man on a Mission” afloat, there’s barely a hint of the big, bloozy stomp of El Camino; the Black Keys have traded blues-rock for blues-infused pop.
Since they’re veterans playing with seasoned pros, the Black Keys execute their transition to adult-alternative pop with precision. No Rain, No Flowers glides along amiably, sliding from the overcaffeinated “The Night Before” to the stiff funk of “Babygirl” with ease. Echoes of beloved oldies reverberate through the record: “Make You Mine”—co-written with Desmond Child, Bon Jovi’s song doctor in the 1980s—hums to the slow swirl of Philly soul; “On Repeat” and “Kiss It” float along to hooks that feel excavated from the golden age of AM radio; and “All My Life” beats to a disco pulse. It’s all exceedingly pleasant, which is a bit of a curse. They’re songs with ingratiating hooks—tracks that would benefit from the ambient exposure of a grocery store or a doctor’s office, where they’d worm their way into the subconscious leaving no trace of entry. It’s so comfortable, in fact, that it hardly feels creative. But at least it sounds reassuring—the kind of music you make when the future is uncertain and you want to keep the end at bay for as long as you can.
