The Black Keys
"Let's Rock"

THE REVIEW

I am sorry to speak ill of something in which someone believes, into which someone has poured time, money, and energy. The Black Keys released their ninth album in June 2019, after 5 years of silence since the previous "Turn Blue".

The duo, composed of Daniel Auerbatch (vocals and guitar) and Patrick Carney (drums), went from a rural blues, with the excellent "Rubber Factory" (2004) to the sales champion with over 1.5 million copies of "El Camino" (2011) containing irresistible hits, "Lonely Boy" above all, to the nothingness of today.

She's good but doesn't apply herself is the phrase my parents heard most at meetings with my teachers, and it's the same for the Akron duo. They are good, they have put little effort into the recent albums, making up for it with class, ideas, and a lot of cunning... But here, everything is missing. There is no heart or soul; in Let's rock, there are few ideas, banal and stale riffs, no potential hits, just lots and lots and looooooots of boooooooring boredom.

It's music that serves well as background and at low volume, at those dull and elegant parties, with a drink in hand talking about nothing, no emotion, and the memory of the evening fades quickly, except for the pain in your feet...

The cover and title are nice, which, it seems, were the words spoken before dying by a death row inmate from Tennessee (one Edmund Zagorski) in the electric chair.

Would you buy a CD just for the cover?