My Amazon Reviews: The Black Keys "Turn Blue"

Psychedelic Stew
4 Out Of 5 Stars

While The Black Keys were always something of a glorified garage band, it's no surprise that they'd eventually delve in to the psychedelical forms of the 60's garage bands. Think "96 Tears" or "Journey To The Center of Your Mind." So the question isn't so much as what The Black Keys are doing with the spacy sounds that scatter through "Turn Blue," It's more like, "What took you so long?" Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney, along with producer Danger Mouse, delve deep in the a psychedelic swamp and emerge with a mighty fine album that is sure to polarize. The album is still primarily the guitars and drums, but the crunch is replaced by woozy synths and female backing singers.

The opener, "Weight Of Love," puts it all out there. Straight up blues with touches of Pink Floyd spaciness, it's a mission statement. The band wants to expand their musical horizons and blow your mind at the same time. Ditto the single, "Fever." It's as sugary as it is spacy, while still pinned down by the guitar/drums of the Black Keys basic sound. Such mixtures run rampant all over "Turn Blue," be it the dreamy build up to a punchy "Bullet In The Brain" to the funky "10 Lovers," or the jungle drums of "It's Up To You Now," this album is The Black Keys tweaking their sound to a slightly different color palette.

But if you were missing the big guitars, then hang in there for the album's closer. "Gotta Get Away" has a big guitar hook raging on top of Danger Mouse's organ, landing the most basic rock on "Turn Blue." Complete with one of Dan's buzzing solos, it's just their way of saying they've still got their guts in the rock and roll of their previous albums. Love it or hate it, "Turn Blue" catches the Black Keys getting courageous enough to deliver an album that punches and floats, often in the same song.

     

My Amazon Reviews: Ray LaMontagne "Supernova"

I wanna be Brando in "The Wild One."
3 Out Of 5 Stars

I am having a really hard time with this new fangled album by Ray LaMontagne. Producer Dan Auerbach wandered in and Black Keyed the guy under layers of psychedelia, echo chambered voices and murky sound. And LaMontagne's voice, a buttery tenor that threads a needle between James Taylor and Van Morrison, is held back on the bulk of "Supernova." Ray has such a naturally beautiful voice, it seems a waste to have him sing in whispers and, on "Airwaves," gasping and gulping like a drowning man.

Fortunately, it's Ray's talents that save "Supernova" from being a total bow-wow. The title track rides Ray's singer-songwriter skills with a nifty hook, and he gets to sing in his full voice. The opener, "Lavender" successfully nicks from The Zombies' "Time Of The Season," but finds Ray's voice buried in whispers and reverb. If you're looking for a reason why fans of the guy (I've been a fan since seeing him at the Newport Folk Festival right after "Trouble" was released) have viewed him as a vanguard of the new singer-songwriters, "Supernova's" closing song makes the case. "Drive In Movies" finds Ray wondering about his past, when he and his friends hung out stealing smokes and being "the guy that breaks all the rules, but the cops let him go because they think that he's cool," before admitting that he's old enough to have to buy his cigarettes and whiskey and gaze upon the empty space where his Drive-In used to be. Again, it's also one of the songs where Ray's voice is allowed to rise above the convoluted production and shimmer the way it's supposed to. In fact, as far as the songwriting is concerned, everything here had the potential to come out as great. But there's that production issue again...

I'm a fan of both Ray and The Black Keys, but this was not a match made in heaven. After the fine and even at times funky "God Willin' and The Creek Don't Rise," "Supernova" feels like a miscalculation. If he tours, I hope Ray keeps the Pariah Dogs from his last album on stage and lets these songs take a more natural course.

     

My Amazon Reviews: Dr John "Locked Down"

Steaming in the Swamp
4 Out Of 5 Stars

This is one heck of a comeback album for Dr John. Produced by Black Key Dan Auerbach, it combines the Keys' garage esthetic with John's Gumbo New Orleans funk. That may serve as both recommendation and warning; if you dig on the Keys' wall of noise sounds, you'll probably like this more than older Dr John fans might. The production is dirty and swampy, with minor key horns and wailing back-up singers piling on some serious blues.

Meanwhile, the Good Doctor uses the opportunity to rail against politics, to throw down a little old time religion, and to bump and grind like it's after closing time and the streets are empty except for you and some old friends with a piano. "Locked Down" is no excessive cheap nostalgia, it's a modern record with everyday concerns. Like the latest Tom Waits album, "Bad As Me," "Locked Down" lets the man Mac Rebennack, and the persona, Dr John, come together and use the character's strengths for superior purposes. As the Dr prowls through "Ice Age" or storms across Auerbach's guitars in the title track, he sounds like a man unleashed.

That retro-groove is astonishing, only letting down on the syrupy "God's Sure God." However, there hasn't been a record this greasy from Dr John for a couple of decades, and there are no covers/standards that seem to have been his stock-in-trade for too long. "Locked Down" is the return of The Night Tripper, and as such, makes this the best Dr John album in near 20 years.

   

My Amazon Reviews: Black Keys "El Camino"

The Finest in Garage Glitter and Grit 

4 Out Of 5 Stars

As The Black Keys have steadily ascended to the garage stomp throne since vacated by The White Stripes, the best thing about their climb has been the increasing coolness of their albums. "Brothers" pulled everything into a tight, thudding packages, and with "El Camino," the duo - again with the help of Danger Mouse - bring everything down to a basic fuzz-guitar pounding. At the same time, everything is in its perfect place, from the raging buzz-saw solos ("Gold On The Ceiling") to the Hives-y raunch of "Stop Stop," this is an album that refines itself to the core.

It also means those who loved the disjointed and unfocused loopiness that the early albums contained will be crying Sell-Out all over the place. The simple truth is, The Black Keys have learned their craft down the a level of cool that most bands never reach. They even know and wink at it; search for the Colbert Report Sell-Out Sell-Off between The Black Keys and vampire Weekend and you'll see what Patrick Carney and Dan Auerbach think of their commercial success. It's only roc
k and roll, and they're going to have a good time with it. "She wants milk and honey/She wants filthy money" cries Auerbach in "Money Maker." It's still all about cars and girls. And volume. And for now, The Black Keys' "El Camino" is the best place to find it.

   

My Amazon Reviews: Black Keys "Brothers"

Howl and Growl with The Black Keys
4 Out Of 5 Stars

The Black Keys are the latest incarnation of garage-band boys to discover the gritty blues. "Brothers" is their best to date, having distilled their influences down to basics, at the same time not jettisoning the hipster production stlye of Danger Mouse and his ilk. The atmosphereic wooshes that swirl underneath the best songs here (especailly "Too Afraid To Love You") eliminate mone of the primal yearning from the songs, and pull them into a more modern sound. Even the update of Jerry Butler's "Never Gonna Give You Up" maintains a reverence for the original; other than being recorded in this century, there's not much difference between the way the two songs feel.

Which is one of the many reasons I enjoy "Brothers." The big echoing drums, the fuzzy guitars, the less than perfect singing (there's no auto-tune on this album) make it more of a feel album than a technical one. When something chugs like "Sinister Kid" or reaches to the falsetto heavens like "Everlasting Light," you can tell that Patrick Carney and Dan Auerbach are trying more to make the album sound right more than having one more go at that perfect take. Or that they feel no shame in taking a Gary Glitter drum stomp and attatching it to "Howlin' For You." "Brothers" takes to the same mold that Jack White seems to have gone for with Dead Weather in that anything worth using is good in service to the song.

Fans of slicked up blues or even the uber-purists will likely not like this, as the music is raw and blunt, without much thought for replicating tradition in a narrow sense. "Brothers" rumbles along its own stream, engrossing everything in the water like so much swamp moss.