The band started working on Brothers at Auerbach’s basement in Akron. “Sometimes, we’re not the best at communicating with each other.” “I wasn’t even sure he wanted to do the band anymore,” says Carney. I bought it at Shangri-La Records in Memphis, and that was a huge influence, the whole year before Brothers.” It’s all black funk and 45 compilations that some crate-diggers did. Theres’ a compilation called Chains and Black Exhaust. Willie Mitchell productions, and then a lot of 45s. We were listening to lots of stuff cut in Muscle Shoals. “We were listening to that Lee Fields My World record, we loved that. “We were listening to a lot of soul music, and so much of the great soul music is really hooky songs,” says Auerbach. “I think that kind of played into what we did when we went to Muscle Shoals.”Īuerbach, meanwhile, was on a journey of discovery. “I think at that point, Dan wasn’t really writing verses, but these choruses and focusing on the groove,” Carney says. After working out their conflict, he and Auerbach turned to a different kind of project: Blacroc, where they backed up rappers like Mos Def, RZA, and Raekwon on a series of hazy instrumentals. That’s probably what it was.”Ĭarney started a band of his own around the same time, called Drummer. They were sitting in a van for eight hours a day, eating junk food and shit. And were dead within five or six years of the band stopping. How intense that must have been for those guys. They were touring actively for, like, 21 years. “Eight years of being in a band touring in a van … it feels a lot longer. “If you keep doing the same thing, you start losing your minds,” says Carney. That year, they released their fifth album, Attack and Release, produced by Danger Mouse, which proved they had an ability to craft huge hooks, with tracks like “I Got Mine” and “Strange Times.” But the band was also getting tired of the grind. By 2008, the Keys had already achieved more success than they’d ever imagined. I can’t believe how much it resonated with people, and it really did completely change our lives.” I knew we had a lot hanging on it, so when I listen back I’m constantly reminded. Whenever he hears the album, he’s reminded of the stakes: “There was a lot fucking hanging on that record,” he says. He plays it whenever he’s testing the speakers in his home studio, “because I’m so familiar with a couple of the songs sonically,” he says, speaking from his new home in South Carolina, where he’s been spending lockdown with wife Michelle Branch and their two-year-old son, Rhys. It contains three bonus tracks, including “Black Mud II,” an alternate of their psychedelic instrumental “Chop and Change” and “Keep My Name Outta Your Mouth” The box set is available on CD and vinyl with a 60-page book with photos from the archives and liner notes written by David Fricke.Ĭarney has listened to Brothers a lot over the years. Their songs appeared in countless commercials and they started playing arenas.Ī decade later, the Keys are marking Brothers’ 10th anniversary with a remastered edition of the LP. Their whistling soul single “Tighten Up” cracked the Hot 100, and earned them a Grammy and a Video Music Award (though when the band received the statue, it was mislabeled to the Black Eyed Peas). The 2010 album - which was packed with deep grooves and “almost spookily timeless pop songs that captured the dusty vibe of the soul-sampling RZA productions they loved,” as Brian Hiatt wrote at the time - propelled them to uncharted territory for a rock band in the 2010s. And these guys just did this and sent it to us, so we hated it extra.”īrothers marked a key transition point for the Keys, where the Akron duo graduated from Rust Belt road warriors to unlikely superstars. “If we ever wanted to do a video, we had to figure out what it was going to be about. “It was the first time any of the big labels ever gave a shit about us,” he says. Today, when he’s reminded of that debate, Auerbach laughs. “It’s the first time Warner has ever spent money on us. “It’s called promotion,” drummer Patrick Carney said. “It’s not funny, and I really don’t like it … They’re fucking with our art, man.” “There’s a fucking dinosaur singing my lyrics!” guitarist-singer Dan Auerbach said after watching the video on their tour bus. To promote their single “Next Girl,” their label had commissioned a video featuring a dinosaur puppet singing the track surrounded by women in bikinis - and the band wasn’t into it. When Rolling Stone joined the Black Keys on the road in 2010, the band was facing a problem.
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