When the Black Keys look back, they won’t have regrets about striking while the iron was hot. After the mammoth success of their sixth album Brothers, which polished the band’s raw blues-rock enough for the radio, the duo raced out two more albums, including 2011’s even slicker El Camino. They headlined arenas and festivals, touring ceaselessly while licensing their music to seemingly any brand interested—which, for a time, felt like all of them. They were ubiquitous, and their sound became so permanently embedded in the airwaves that casual listeners may not have noticed they’ve been gone.
The duo’s new “Let’s Rock” follows their last effort Turn Blue by five years, the longest gap of their career. As the band tells it, they burned out, though during their time off Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney both continued making music at their typically relentless clip, just not with each other. Carney produced records for Michelle Branch, Tobias Jesso Jr., Wild Belle, and others, while Auerbach helmed records by the Pretenders and Cage the Elephant and dropped a leisurely solo album.
For some bands, that time apart might have yielded an epiphany that reshaped their approach. But the Black Keys have never much valued change. They’re focused, workmanlike, and committed to what works. As a result, “Let’s Rock” plays exactly like the record they might have rushed out right after Turn Blue.
This time, they are working without Danger Mouse, the producer whose modern/retro fusion helped prime the band for their crossover. His fingerprints in particular were all over the psychedelic hodgepodge of Turn Blue and its kitchen-sink strings and keyboards. “Let’s Rock,” in turn, opts for a streamlined approach: just Auerbach, Carney, a pair of backing vocalists (Ashley Wilcoxson and Leisa Hans) and as many overdubs as it takes to get the job done.
In truth, Danger Mouse’s window dressings neither added nor detracted all that much from the band’s sound. His absence leaves more room for riffs, and “Let’s Rock” doesn’t skimp on them. “Shine a Little Light” kicks off with a torrent of brawling guitars, the embodiment of those old speaker ads with the guy in a chair blowing away his living room. “Lo/Hi,” about reckless thrills and brutal comedowns, is even more undeniable, pure leather-jacketed swagger.
Most of “Let’s Rock” hits its mark, but sometimes the band cribs so overtly from their influences that it feels like cheating off of a test. The guitars on “Walk Across the Water” ape the suave glide of T. Rex’s “Jeepster," while “Sit Around and Miss You” lifts its lick so shamelessly from Stealers Wheel’s “Stuck in the Middle With You” that it’s hard to hear it without picturing Michael Madsen slicing off a dude’s ear. Elsewhere the influences are subtler—shades of Steely Dan in the amplified soft-rock of “Breaking Down,” a hint of the Isley Brothers in the nimble lick of “Tell Me Lies.”
If none of those reference points are especially hip, that seems to be by design. “Let’s Rock” feels like a deliberate retreat from the limelight, where the Black Keys were always an odd fit anyway. Ambitious? No. Effective? Swish. Just as the album art for Brothers, with its matter-of-fact text, downplayed expectations, “Let’s Rock” is upfront about its meat-and-potatoes aspirations. This is an album by the Black Keys called “Let’s Rock.” It does.
Buy: Rough Trade
