The Black Keys were never meant to be classy. For one, they're from Akron, a city that's not quite East Coast or Midwestern and has vaguely smelled like burning tires every time I've driven through it. For another, they're playing blues-rock in 2006-- no irony, no kind of pretense to authority or being some new band of purists, just a blues-rock band. But even if their so-called "raw" panache had been recycled a few times over, they had the kind of songs ("10 a.m. Automatic" chief among them) that demanded the car windows be cranked down and the volume knob twisted firmly to the right for anyone weaned on classic rock radio.
Now signed to elegant major-label imprint Nonesuch, their set up remains the same: one guitar and a set of drums. Singer/guitarist Dan Auerbach plays these unadorned riffs like the guitar was a harp, like their blues pillaging was a stately and noble pursuit, and these familiar riffs should be admired in and of themselves like museum pieces. I didn't expect to hear a 13-piece orchestra on Magic Potion, but nor did I expect to hear such a dry, austere record after the warmth of Rubber Factory. They whip up everything they can between just the two of them, Auerbach and drummer Pat Carney, but what they work up this time isn't a sweat-- it's restraint. On Magic Potion, the pleasures are coyer and the variations much more subtle from riff to riff, song to song. In other words, it's not the record I want to hear from the Black Keys.
There are few attempts to push the two-man band into newer territory, but those that do aren't necessarily welcome. "Strange Desire" is a worked-up staccato paean, leaning on cymbal tapping and heavy reverb like a "No Pigeons"-style aggrandizing retort to the Kills' "The Good Ones", but squelches any of its novelty by rhyming "fire" with "desire." At the end of each verse. There are three verses. "You're the One" fares better, a slow honey drip of gorgeousness with some much-needed vocal doubling to further sweeten the deal, but it's not half as palatable as, say, "The Lengths" from Rubber Factory.
There's very little spark to early sequenced numbers "Your Touch" or the "Heartbreaker" retread "Just a Little Heat", but the latter half of the album does slow down and start to smolder. The title track makes the most of its space as Carney pounds in all the right places, showing restraint without losing the track's pulse. "The Flame" is a molten slow jam, as is "Goodbye Babylon", a stop-start stutter that stretches its quiet tension over a tricky chorus riff that would be awkward in the hands of any other band. But as Magic Potion shows, it's difficult to sustain an entire album of that almost-but-not-quite letting loose (and being a two-instrument band obviously doesn't help).
I'm not willing to rehash the argument over whether they have the right to play their sparse, occasionally unpredictable take on blues-- one of the most tired arguments there is-- because I couldn't care less whether they jacked their swagger from Muddy Waters, Led Zeppelin, or even White Stripes. They used to be a good time. They used to have songs. Magic Potion is a record where overwhelming competence meets measured restraint, but for me, sacrilege trumps sincerity, and I'd rather hear tuneful blasphemy than a tasteful snoozer of an album. Shit, give me Blueshammer any day.
