While not as lo-fi as their earlier releases, there still is a home-spun, swampy quality to Brothers, mostly due to their recording at the rather dilapidated Muscle Shoals Sound studio, which was in such bad shape that they put their own equipment on top of the studio’s non-functioning console. They also had to deal with some of that equipment dying due to local utility work causing burned out mics and wrecked mixers.

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Anyway, it was a great show, the duo’s sound beefed up by three backing musicians. They played several songs from Let’s Rock including a few of my favorites: the singles “Lo/Hi” (which went to the top of  Billboard’s Mainstream Rock, Adult Alternative Songs, Rock Airplay, and Alternative Songs charts simultaneously, making it the first song ever to do so), “Eagle Birds” and my top-pick, “Go” which is a great summer anthem with a hilarious video. I also really love “Shine a Little Light,” the album’s opener, and “Under the Gun.” I don’t love the whole LP though: “Walk Across the Water,” “Sit Around and Miss You” (though the video is damn funny, a parody of the commercial that aired incessantly in the 80′s for “Freedom Rock”) and “Breaking Down” are all a little too 60′s/70′s smooth California blues-rock for my taste. Though, weirdly, I really like “Tell Me Lies,” which has a similar sound as those last two (kinda Eagles-ish with a dash of Steve Miller Band) but it’s got such a great hook that I’m overlooking it. Honestly it’s taken me awhile to really warm to Let’s Rock: The Raconteurs Help Us Stranger was released about a week before Let’s Rock and there’s that (untrue??) rivalry between Jack White/The White Stripes and Dan Auerbach/The Black Keys that makes comparisons virtually impossible to avoid – and I really really love Help Us Stranger. So when I had the choice of which to listen to on repeat, The Raconteurs inevitably have won out – but I’m making more of an effort now.

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Allmusic says about Rubber Factory: [The Black Keys] know that sound matters, not just how a band plays but how a band is recorded, and that blues sounds better when it’s unvarnished, which is why each of their records feels more like a real blues album than anything cut since the ‘60s. But they’re not revivalists, either. They’ve absorbed the language of classic rock and the sensibility of indie rock – they’re turning familiar sounds into something nervy and fresh, music that builds on the past yet lives fearlessly in the moment. On a sheer gut level, they’re intoxicating and that alone would be enough to make Rubber Factory a strong listen, but what makes it transcendent is that [Dan] Auerbach has developed into such a fine songwriter. His songs have enough melodic and lyrical twists to make it seem like he’s breaking rules, but his trick is that he’s doing this within traditional blues-rock structures. He’s not just reinvigorating a familiar form, he’s doing it without a lick of pretension; it never seems as if the songs were written, but that they’ve always existed and have just been discovered, which is true of any great blues song. Carney gives these songs the production they deserve – some tunes are dense and heavy with guitars, others are spacious and haunting – and the result is the most exciting and best rock & roll record of 2004.

I really love this entire album, but my top tracks are the vaguely sinister and Junior Kimbrough-esque “When the Lights Go Out,” the ass-shaking “10 A.M. Automatic,” the funky, groovin’ “All Hands Against His Own,” swaggering “The Desperate Man,” the shredding cover of Robert Pete Williams’ narrative and bluesy “Grown So Ugly” (Williams was discovered while in prison serving a life sentence for murder; Captain Beefheart also recorded the track in 1967), the sorrowful and cautionary tale of “Stack Shot Billy” and the 60′s garagey “’Till I Get My Way.” The only track I’m not overly crazy about is the cover of The Kinks “Act Nice and Gentle.” (I love The Kinks, too, but this song is really hokey).

Finally, if you’re on Instagram, follow Patrick Carney. His feed is hilarious! I especially enjoyed the long-running series he had a year or so ago with weird and disgusting food from the 50′s and 60′s which involved a lot of jello salads.

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We saw Hanni El Khatib about four years ago when he played Milwaukee’s Turner Hall, in between the releases of Head in the Dirt and 2015′s Moonlight. I think it was a mid-week show and attendance was pretty sad, which is a bummer because HEK is a brilliant musician and performer.

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With the release of this debut album, The Black Keys helped (along with The White Stripes and other less well-known bands) usher in yet another blues renaissance to popular music. On the back cover of the record, Denise Grollmus writes “…when you place this record on your turntable you’ll suddenly realize that – somewhere, somehow – there are people who are rekindling the life of truly soulful music. At first, the quality of the recordings may force you into nostalgic distance. You may be thinking to yourself that it is impossible for two young white men in 2002 to have made such a recording. Think again.”

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No fun my babe
No fun
No fun my babe
No fun
No fun to hang around
Feelin’ that same old way
No fun to hang around
Freaked out for another day
No fun my babe
No fun
No fun my babe
No fun
No fun to be alone
Walking by myself
No fun to be alone
In love with nobody else
Well maybe go out, maybe stay home
Maybe call Mom on the telephone
Well c’mon, well c’mon
C’mon c’mon
Now Ron, I say Ron
C’mon and lemme hear you tell em
Lemme hear you tell em
Now I feel
I say lemme hear you
Tell em how I feel, yeah, my man
No fun to be alone
It’s no fun to be alone
Hang on
Don’t you lemme go
It’s no fun to alone
To be alone

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