The Black Keys play the hits on the solid ‘Dropout Boogie’

Name: The Black Keys - Dropout Boogie
Rating: 3.5

Tyler Golsen

Fri 13 May 2022 8:11, UK

The Black Keys - 'Dropout Boogie'

6.8

This week, The Black Keys dropped their eleventh studio album, Dropout Boogie. At almost this exact time 20 years ago, two college dropouts in their early 20s named Patrick Carney and Dan Auerbach released The Big Come Up, their ragged and raw debut LP. Because symmetry is agreeable, that begs the question: who the hell are The Black Keys in 2022?

An easy answer is that The Black Keys are still one of the biggest arena rock bands of the modern-day. Gearing up to take on classic venues like The Forum in Los Angeles and Red Rocks in Colorado on their upcoming supporting tour, the band are still one of rock’s most reliable draws. There’s a certain comfort with The Black Keys – even a five-year hiatus couldn’t stop the standard operating procedures of albums followed by massive tours.

Since their return from their five-year break, however, there’s been a noticeable desire from the band to distance themselves from their commercial heights. The Black Keys are certainly not the same band that was slumming it in Carney’s basement and releasing records on tiny independent labels back in the early 2000s. An entirely different world of music blogs and indie rock revival swept up the band and pushed them to become “that one rock band your grandma knows” by 2010’s Brothers, and even more so after 2012’s El Camino. Through their acclaimed work with producer Danger Mouse and a crazy amount of media licensing, The Black Keys were, quite literally, everywhere.

The Black Keys return with new album ‘Let’s Rock’

2019’s Let’s Rock saw no keyboards, no super producers, and no outside collaborators (aside from backing vocals). The band then doubled down on their desire to return to their roots by releasing a full album of Mississippi blues covers in 2021 with Delta Kream. After trying to give their latest evolution some room to grow, it’s back to the old habits on Dropout Boogie.

For one thing, Dropout Boogie sees the band return to collaboration, pairing up with professional songwriter Angelo Petraglia and garage punk lifer Greg Cartwright. With the purposefully stripped down Let’s Rock firmly in the rearview, The Black Keys have once again opened their doors to outside direction, something that hasn’t happened since 2014’s Turn Blue.

There are a fair number of comparisons between those two albums. Dropout Boogie is remarkably psychedelic for a band that is usually associated with stark blues or stylish arena rock. Not that Turn Blue was some acid flashback to the 1960s: this is still Danger Mouse behind the desk, so some formal polish is necessary. This is also, after all, the same band that released an experimental 23-minute closing track to their first album two decades prior.

The album kicks off with ‘Wild Child’, the band’s sleek and funky lead single that features some generic lusting from Auerbach behind a reliably groovy backbeat. It’s an underrated talent of the band to create foot-stomping rhythms so consistently. No matter what kind of style they might be exploring, Carney always seems to have that knack for keeping things in the pocket.

What follows is a relative blur – nine more songs that seem vaguely familiar. The band are at their best when they’re indulging in some of their weirder idealism like ‘Your Team Is Looking Good’, which is legitimately a cheerleader chant. I’m not sure if that was where the thematic inspiration started and ended, but there are times when the song turns into a near-parody of what a high school football squad might hear from the sidelines.

For the most part, though, Dropout Boogie has a steady stream of facsimiles and signature sounds that have all already been done on previous Black Keys albums. I’m not going to knock the band for sounding like themselves, but Dropout Boogie is certainly very much a workmanlike album. It’s time to come back to a room and record from scratch because that’s what they always do. It might have 20 years of staleness around the corners, but the centre is still surprisingly fresh and exciting.

So The Black Keys aren’t flirting with the mainstream quite like they were a full decade ago. That’s perfectly fine, because they are coasting nicely on the kind of classic career path that feels natural for an institution like them. This is legacy time for The Black Keys, and if they keep releasing decently solid material like Dropout Boogie, then there’s no reason why they can’t be like The Rolling Stones or Red Hot Chili Peppers: touring huge venues until the end of time as they occasionally throw out new material to keep things fresh. There’s nothing new under the sun for The Black Keys, but that’s just fine when 20 years seem to go by in the blink of an eye.