THE BLACK KEYS: TURN BLUE (2014)
1) Weight Of Love; 2) In Time;
3) Turn Blue; 4) Fever; 5) Year In Review; 6) Bullet In The Brain; 7) It's Up
To You Now; 8) Waiting On Words; 9) 10 Lovers; 10) In Our Prime; 11) Gotta Get
Away.
If, for some reason, you happened to miss out
on Brothers and El Camino and have stumbled upon this record right after Rubber Factory, prepare yourself for a
shock comparable with arriving at... well, let's say Genesis' We Can't Dance right after Foxtrot. Or try to imagine AC/DC doing
a disco album. Not altogether impossible — with a little overworking of the
fantasy machine, you could see Angus
Young adapting his guitar style to the good old four-on-the-floor. (In fact,
they almost came close to it on a
couple songs off Highway To Hell).
Although it's not as if there were no going
back altogether, Turn Blue sees the
finalization of the transformation of the original Black Keys into something
completely different. Many critics and fans alike have blamed this on the ever
increasing influence of Danger Mouse, who they accuse of practically running
this band now and adapting them to his own musical taste and vision. I have a
hard time accepting that — unless he keeps Dan and Patrick on drugs or
something, these guys don't really look like they could be so easily
manipulated into sacrificing their identity and becoming the willing slaves of
their producer. More grounded would be an accusation of «selling out»: the
success of El Camino has brought The
Black Keys to the attention of a much larger fanbase than the old blues-rock revival
crowds, and so it could be expected that they might want to go on moving in
that same «commercial» direction — and simply retain Danger Mouse as their good
luck charm. «If he can get us to No. 2, surely he can get us to No. 1». And that
he did.
But even so, «commercial» is such a vague term
these days that there is little sense in trying to use it as an expletive. In
the 1980s, for instance, if you went «commercial», this meant a very well
defined style of production and musical values. In 2014, there is a range of
«commercial» artists that covers all the vast space between Katy Perry and Lana
del Rey, so what exactly would count as a «sellout»? And although Turn Blue does sound «modern» in its
choice of production techniques, glossiness of sound, and electronic seasoning,
its melodic backbone (like most of the melodic backbones of 2014, for that
matter), hails from quite a chronologically different era.
In its relatively diverse array of styles, Turn Blue sounds like the band's
declaration of love for the Seventies, a decade in which neither of the two
band members spent any reasonable amount of time (Dan was born in 1979, and
Patrick one year later), but which seems to have shaped most of their musical
preferences anyway. Except where, earlier, they would be inspired primarily by
the heavy blues-rock acts, now they
pay their dues to the R&B, funk, art-pop, and even progressive rock
corners of the scene. They do adapt all that baggage to the pulls and yearnings
of their own soul, it's true — that unexplainable «blues feeling», the one
which is so hard to fake when you get to know it, is all over this record. But
then it was all over the records by their predecessors just as well. So it does become
a tad difficult to understand where the imitation ends and the real Danny
Auerbach begins. It's even possible that he doesn't really begin at all.
As the album starts, with the multi-part epic
ʽWeight Of Loveʼ, you might ask yourself the question: «Is this really The
Black Keys, or is this a Pink Floyd outtake?» Those pensive guitar chords,
those wailing keyboard effects sounding like lonely planets zooping by your
window, they all seem conspiring to put you in a Dark Side Of The Moon (more exactly, ʽBreatheʼ) state of mind. Then
the song changes its time signature, becomes funkier and gradually more violent,
before erupting in a climactic solo — but throughout the song, it still retains
some of that initial Floydishness, and that's... weird.
ʽIn Timeʼ and a couple other songs bring on
memories of such recent «R&B» successes as Amy Winehouse, which were, of
course, themselves revivals of something older. With a moody, catchy guitar
riff but little else in the way of guitar work (most of the other non-percussive
overlays are generated with Danger Mouse's array of keyboards), it is a moody «art-groove»
that seems to warn us of something we are not sure of ("...you were having
your fun, now you're under the gun...") in Dan's anguished falsetto
(which he uses quite a bit on the album, despite the fact that they never
really go into disco: ʽFeverʼ comes close, but it still sounds more like The
Cars than Chic). None of it is bad, but none of it is terribly inspiring,
either.
Sometimes it is downright bizarre: ʽWaiting On
Wordsʼ begins in retro-romantic mode, so much so that Auerbach almost sounds
like Robin Gibb: the brutal beast trying on some ruffled fabric for a change.
As impeccably melodic as these songs are, they are just not too convincing.
Wolves in sheep skins? Soulless experiments? Or is it just a case of hopelessly
misplaced falsetto? Something like the title track, for instance — to me,
despite the paranoid bass line and minor moods, it just refuses to satisfy the
«desperate tension» requirement of the lyrics. As The Black Keys «turn blue»,
there is a nagging suspicion that by «blue» they actually mean «half-frozen to
death», and little else. As hard as it is to put my finger on what exactly went
wrong here.
Something did
go wrong, though, if I distinctly feel a sense of relief when it comes to the
last track — ʽGotta Get Awayʼ opens with some crunchy Stones-like riffage, then
quickly turns into a slightly softened up pub-rocker with a pop chorus. No
pretense or ambition, no quirky production tricks... no «classic Black Keys»
ambience, either, but somehow the song, even despite its repetitiveness
(before it is over, you will remember exactly how far Kalamazoo is from San
Berdoo), feels more «real» than everything else on here.
To put it short and blunt, Turn Blue is not a bad album — but it intentionally forgets about
what it was that made The Black Keys such an outstanding band; Turn Faceless would have been a more
appropriate title. On the other hand, even as a faceless album, it is an
interesting experiment in retro-genre-hopping, it sounds tasteful, it has some
good songwriting, and in the end, after much deliberation, I still give it a thumbs up.
Just do not even think of getting close to it if you come to the Black Keys
section with definite expectations.
So far I've only heard "Fever," and I just can't get past that god-awful keyboard/organ sound they picked for the main riff. Just so weak and irritating, like a mosquito buzzing past your ear.
ReplyDeleteThat said, curious to hear the rest of the album.