Album Review: The Black Keys, No Rain, No Flowers

It could be safely argued that Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney have grown ever-more commercial in their musical output over the years. The Ohio duo’s early albums spilled over with raw garage blues-rock, but since their breakthrough sixth record, Brothers, in 2010, they’ve gradually toned down the noise and turned up the radio-friendliness.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting more people to hear your songs and if you can make a few dollars at the same time, more power to ye. And there are still huge swathes of this 13th long-player that are easily recognisable as The Black Keys, from the vintage r’n’b of ‘Babygirl’ to the crunching guitar assault of ‘Man On A Mission’ (complete with Sabbath-esque middle-eight) or ‘A Little Too High’, whose gospel-tinged southern boogie sounds like Primal Scream covering the Allman Brothers.

However, this album is perhaps a little wilfully eclectic for its own good. Apparently inspired by the band’s ‘record hangs’, where Auerbach and Carney take turns spinning rare vinyl, it’s a melting pot of genres and styles that feels more like a compilation than a cohesive album in its own right.

The mid-paced title track could be an Arcade Fire cast-off, albeit a decent one. The laid-back guitar pop of ‘Kiss It’ is Steely Dan jamming with Jack White, while the yearning ‘Neon Moon’ is the sound of U2’s ‘40’ put through a Creedence blender. The extremely polished ‘Make You Mine’ has a falsetto chorus straight from the Bee Gees songbook in their Seventies’ pomp, and yet it’s impossible to dislike – indeed, the more listens you give it, the more you realise its brilliance.

So a little too shiny and genre-fluid, perhaps, although still bursting at the seams with hummable melodies.

7.5/10

Out now