listening to this latest Black Keys album. I know it's very popular to love this album and the collaboration between Danger Mouse and the Keys, but it just ain't got the simple beauty of their earlier stuff. While I agree with others that innovation and change are good things for bands to explore, I do not think that is what happened here. It feels to me like they just dressed up some old concepts and dulled the edge that makes the early stuff so great. I also agree that Magic Potion was not very inspired, but I do miss being amazed by the incredible depth of the early, simple, raw, recordings. It's possible to innovate without losing the soul.
June 28, 2008All I can say is if you are new to TBK, listen to ANYTHING else but Attack & Release if you want to get a real feel for them. After loving everything they have put out so far, I cannot listen "cringe-free" through this album. I love Dangermouse, but the old recipe was "IT" for me! Please go back!!!
June 25, 2008 |  | Two-piece rock band = one piece of plop |  |
Yawn ... With the exception of Suicide and maybe the Ravonettes, all two-piece rock bands stink.
Get some bass players, do it properly and let's declare this tinny and derivative genre dead. Thank you.
June 22, 2008 | | Why You Need This Album NOW! | |
A lot of people are saying that this album is too "polished" for a Black Keys project; but I don't hear the "polish," I hear genius. While tracks like "I Got Mine" or "Strange Times" deliver exactly the kind of scorching "attack" the title promises, it's in the album's departures from that familiar terrain that its vision achieves the range of true rock pioneers. The lilting twang and echo of "So He Won't Break" vaguely echoes some great lost gem by surf-rock gods The Ventures, a flutter of piano and xylophone (yes, xylophone) dressing Auerbach's dreamy licks in a rich jewelery of sound. The acoustic and countrified "All You Ever Wanted" exudes the effortless mojo of rock staples like "Sway" or "Torn & Frayed," and the album closes with an absolutely devastating ballad, "Things Ain't Like They Used to Be," a spare and hypnotic gut-wrencher that's bound to show up again on year-end "Top Ten Songs of 2008 lists.
This ain't your mother's rock `n roll-or, then again, maybe it is-and maybe that's why it sounds so fresh. Rock `n roll hasn't sounded this real since the night Keith Richards woke up in a hotel in Clearwater and recorded what he heard in his dreams-the riff that became "Satisfaction." But the point is that Attack & Release embodies as much of the spirit as the soul of rock `n roll, pausing for a slow jam and unplugging the amps whenever the urge strikes, producing work that's as compelling as any driving rocker the Keys have ever put to wax.
Rubber Soul laid the groundwork for this expansion of the band's sound, exploding with the belch and wail of an acoustic guitar ("When the Lights Go Out") that picked up where their idol and bonafide blues god Junior Kimbrough left off. It's no wonder that not even Kimbrough's own widow, Mildred, was surprised when The Black Keys released their neglected but brilliant 6-track EP of electric Kimbrough covers, Chulahoma, an album she endorsed in a recorded telephone call the Keys included on the EP itself (keep listening after the last track.) The unfocused but sporadically entertaining Magic Potion continued this nod to experimentation with the mildly psychedelic "You're the One," a ballad in which you can almost hear the echo of Tommy James's "Crimson & Clover" somewhere in the distance. But only now have those glimpses of a broader sound blossomed into the full fruit of Attack and Release, the best rock album 2008 is yet to produce, bar none.
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June 9, 2008One of the best cd's I've purchased in a while. Unique blues sound, very original.
June 8, 2008More reviews at Amazon.com ...
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