About

The two-piece band’s journey to commercial and critical superstardom stretches back into the early years of last decade, including a plethora of breakthroughs and milestones along the way. No disrespect to bluesy garage rock debut The Big Come Up, but sophomore LP Thickfreakness, which celebrated its tenth anniversary last month, is where The Black Keys first fully harnessed the subversive, raucous verve that underpins their most liberated and puissant cuts. Raw, densely textured, and tightly configured to fundamental blues paradigms, Thickfreakness revives Delta Blues with a scabrous laxity that‘s rooted not in the cotton fields of the South but in the decrepit unmanned factories of the deindustrialized Midwest. Though the band indisputably tweaked and modified their sound over the years this recalcitrant rejection of rustbelt paralysis serves as the backbone for their subsequent five offering, from their 2004 follow-up Rubbery Factory to 2010’s platinum polished Brothers and 2011’s Grammy-adorned, El Camino.

Building upon but never merely appropriating the discontent of 20th century Delta Blues, Thickfreakness applies traditional blues reflexes to the modern day daemons of social alienation, vocational mediocrity, and the urban grind. – Consequence of Sound