Album reviews: The Black Keys turn it on, while The Chills show their cool
The Black Keys and The Chills have both released new albums.
★★★★☆
Burnout, fame, feuds with Jack White – nobody could accuse the Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney of taking the obvious route through their career.
But perhaps that has now changed. Steeped in the blues from their origins in Akron, Ohio, 20 years ago, they have now embarked on the slightly obvious course of paying tribute to some of the artists that moulded them.
Delta Kream is a dense and rollicking tribute record – and an act of unabashed homage, in which the guitars are turned all the way up and some of the solos threaten to go on all week. This is not a criticism: this is an LP in which to lose yourself as Auerbach and Carney give homage to John Lee Hooker (Crawling Kingsnake) and to Mississippi bluesman Junior Kimbrough (Do The Romp).
Backed by Kimbrough’s own bassist Eric Deaton, and by RL Burnside guitarist Kenny Brown, the project is both a pedal-to-the-floor celebration and an exercise in rock ’n roll anthropology. And if determined to bring their own twist to the material, Auerbach and Carney also appear set on recreating these songs in something like their original state.
It makes for a clamorous and highly evocative listen, with the Black Keys stepping back in time and throwing themselves into the churning currents of the Mississippi and its ageless musical legacy.
★★★★☆
“Pop music but played with a punk spirit” is how Chills leader Martin Phillipps defined his group’s sound to the Irish Examiner several years ago. He stays true to that guiding principle on the group’s seventh studio album, which, at its best, suggests Joy Division rewriting The Beatles’ Strawberry Fields.
“Give me the power of ancient stones under the monolith,” the Dunedin native sings on single Monolith – an indie belter that manages to be both naggingly catchy and low-key creepy (what does he want that ancient power for precisely?) More stripped down than previous Chills records, Scatterbrain finds Phillipps mournfully strumming an acoustic guitar (Hourglass) and wondering about his place in the world (“destiny, I want to see where you and I would go,” he croons on Destiny).
The melancholy is perhaps explained by the Hepatitis C that nearly killed the singer several years ago. But that laser-focused gift for melody never deserts him and explodes from the speakers on the title track. All those decades on, and The Chills still live up to their name, bringing out goosebumps in listeners unsuspecting and otherwise.
