The Black Keys – Attack & Release

Attack & Release – The Black Keys

By Chris Peken

The tracks that have become Attack & Release had their beginnings as a collaboration between The Black Keys and the musically legendary and personally infamous Ike Turner. All wife-beating jokes aside, ol’ Ike up and shuffled off his mortal coil before much headway could be made, but with producer Danger Mouse already on board The Black Keys decided to persevere and headed for a dusky, home-built studio outside of Cleveland. The result is an album that distinctly blurs the lines between the previously art school White Stripes and the former garage-bound, primal blues-rock of The Black Keys. Indeed a case could well be made for some strange reality TV program where both bands “genre-swapped”. Attack & Release bears Danger Mouse’s distinctive print of sonically sculptures landscapes rather than the slabs of brutal blues of The Black Keys previous Magic Potion or Rubber Factory, although the band seem more than happy to accommodate him in this department. There are the more traditional moments like Strange Times where the floor toms thump in, followed by a sizable fuzz riff from Dan Auerbach’s six-string and the trash release of Remember When (Side B) (perhaps this is a hint), but overall this is an album, an ascetic, rather than a collection of individual songs – and as such it’s a hard one to grab a hold of. At the end of Attack & Release The Black Keys tell it like it is, Things Ain’t Like They Used To Be – by then you well and truly know it, it’s just hard to know what to make of it.

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