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TURNING BLUE: Black Keys Disappoint

The Black Keys are back and more boring than ever.
Let me rewind a little bit; to be fair, they’ve only released one song (“Fever”) with the announcement of their new album “Turn Blue,” but I remain unimpressed.
In fact, I have already turned blue from The Black Keys late-2011 album “El Camino.”
I’m more impressed by how strange the announcement for the album was: a tweet from Mike Tyson’s twitter on March 21 simply stating “Turn Blue” with a link to the creepy announcement video. I guess we could use the words: creative marketing choice?
What’s that you say? OK, whatever. I get it, I’m wrong.
Let me say this, as a longtime fan, I am inherently biased. “El Camino” was a popular album, but The Black Keys I fell in love with had Dan Auerbach’s impressively crafted blues riffs fried up with crispy fuzz, singing with too-soulful-to-understand mumbles, paired solely with Patrick Carney’s steady drum bashing.
Now where are they? Consistent with how I feel about “El Camino,” this recently released track is an uninspiring heap of pop rock. I expect something more from The Black Keys at this point.
There is hardly anything fresh about it. The freshest aspect is the just-enough modulation in the mix for music critics to call it psychedelic, but give it a listen; it’s not psychedelic at all. It sounds just like a mirror image of tunes they cranked out on the last album.
The only credit I would like to give the most recent Black Keys music is its danceability.
It is a good dimension for a band to add as far as marketing goes. Perhaps The Black Keys are still in the music industry only to monetarily sustain them, and I cannot blame them.
After all, why do any of us get jobs, eh?
But, the pure talent between these two had enough purity to drive them away from selling out for record sales.
I guess I’m just disappointed that there is a lack of soul that Dan and Patrick are injecting into their sonic creations. It sounds like the heart wrenching material is there in the lyrical content, but not in the delivery.
My hope is that on the future release of their album, “Turn Blue”, the boys find a way back to their more gritty roots. (May 13)

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