The Black Keys – The Big Come Up LP Alive Records

The vinyl version includes alternate versions of Heavy Soul, She Said She Said.”Rawboned blues duo the Black Keys hail from Akron, Ohio, but a listen to The Big Come Up suggests the Keys may have been raised by Mississippi ridge-runners. While Dan Auerbach’s overdriven ax is powered by the same internal-combustion engine that drove blues legends Junior Kimbrough and Fred McDowell, this is no po-faced retro show. There’s Wu-Tang Clan-schooled funk in drummer Patrick Carney’s fatback beats, and on the cranked-up “Countdown,” Auerbach suppresses a sob with the droll closing couplet, “You stole my heart and damn near drove me mad/I gotta get back home to my mom and dad.” From the truthfully titled “Heavy Soul” to a devolved, choogling cover of the Beatles’ “She Said, She Said,” this is a righteous choice for rock debut of the year. In a world gone White Stripes crazy, save room in your heart and CD wallet for the Black Keys.” – Peter Relic/Rolling Stone”What frontman Dan Auerbach does is make Leslie West seem like an underrated genius. Moreover, Auerbach has an intriguing vocal delivery: Instead of sounding like a white dude trying to sing like a black guy, he sounds like a white dude trying to sing like some other white dude who’s trying to sing like a black guy. Here again, I’m not sure how this became desirable. Cagily produced by untrained drummer (i.e., former guitar player) Patrick Carney, The Big Come Up can essentially be defined by its four strongest songs: “I’ll Be Your Man” (sort of a pseudo-sexy mid-tempo Otis Redding homage), “The Breaks” (sort of a Boss Hog number, I think), “Leavin’ Trunk” (sort of “Mississippi Queen,” minus the sort of), and a better-than-solid Beatles cover (“She Said, She Said”). So I suppose nobody is ever gonna accuse these rubber city rebels of being overly creative (it doesn’t help that they’ve picked a name for their band that starts with the word “The” and follows with the name of a color).