Turn Blue

With Turn Blue, the Black Keys eighth and latest album, they have made one of the best albums of 1974. And I don't mean that as a knock, considering that there was a lot of great music back then. It's just that this is almost purely a retro record, rattling the teacups in baby boomers brains.

The Black Keys have always been two guys--Daniel Auerbach on guitars and vocals, and Patrick Carney on drums, but they have added a new member, Brian Burton (aka Danger Mouse) to play keyboards. The trio produced and wrote the music, and while it's not an outlier in their sound, it is a different kind of record, more heavily relying on keyboards and a psychedelic soul sound.

This is apparent from the opening track, "The Weight of Love," which has echoes of Pink Floyd, with an opening instrumental track (if it were played on the radio in the '70s this would be where the DJ would talk over it). The album ends with "Gonna Get Away," a generic classic-rock song, the kind that could have been made by a hundred different, barely-remembered bands of the era, like Bachman-Turner Overdrive or Foghat.

We also get the Beatlesque "In Our Prime," the funk-laden "Fever," and the rollicking "In Time," which has a great hook. Fantastic hooks have always been the purview of the Black Keys, and it's no exception here.

From what I've read, the lyrics on this album are colored by the recent divorce that Auerbach went through, but since there is no lyric sheet (there is a useless foldout poster of the cover, one of those hypno-wheels) so I can't really comment on that, as they are not easy to make out given the mix of the record.

I have the last three Black Keys albums, and as to where this fits in the scheme of things is a tough question. It certainly is different from the last two, but I can't say it's better or worse. I do now I liked it a lot, and I hope they continue to explore and experiment.