“The Black Keys Sound Like a Band Going through the Motions on Delta Kream.”

Midwestern blues-rock urchins The Black Keys have always been a little bit retro. Let’s be honest. Rubber Factory, their breakthrough indie masterpiece from ’04, had the instrumentation of The White Stripes with probably way more of a fixation on warmed-over Delta Blues riffs and lonely, pain-stoked lyrical themes. They pulled it off, by and large, with a great mix in the way of booming, overwhelming drums and guitar that was always snarky and shrill enough to give the whole thing some spice. 

Their covers album, Delta Kream, apparently intended to highlight some blues artists of yore like Junior Kimbrough and, uh, pad their pockets, is like retro turned round the corner and decked in some Renaissance fare. It’s like antiquated by Cream’s [1] standards, a band that recorded albums solely in the late ’60s but at least had the good sense to interpolate some harmonica on some key debut album tracks like “Rollin’ and Tumblin’” and “Cat’s Squirrel.”

On Delta Kream, Dan Auerbach trudges along the selfsame path of faux-soulful, overly clean and sterile blues guitar, and the result is almost comedically mundane. It pretty much works, by and large, for the first song “Crawling Kingsnake,” although this is a tune that should be a maximum of four minutes, instead of the monotonous, semi-purgatorial six. By the time we get to the next couple tracks “Louise” and “Poor Boy a Long Way from Home,” it’s clear that this band really is out of ideas right now, a malady of course suggested somewhat by the very nature of a covers album, but still somewhat of a surprise in the case of a band so apparently enthralled by old Howlin’ Wolf and Jimmy Reed performances. To the Keys’ credit, I thought their last album “Let’s Rock” was pretty solid and really didn’t get the full credit it deserved, so maybe they’re a little disenchanted before the prospect of baring their muse to the world another time. Another troubling thing, though, about Delta Kream, is that it seems to homogenize their influences within Delta Blues when Rubber Factory was almost as much of a grunge and classic rock album, with the expedited chord progressions of “10 A.M. Automatic” and the pastoral Pink Floyd tranqulity of “The Lengths.” In attempting to be an authentic blues band in the 21st century, something intrinsically pretty laughable on its surface, the Keys are putting themselves inside a stifling, suffocating panic room instead of a true habitat where they can breathe, relate to large audience and gratifyingly extol their predecessors. 

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[1] I have no idea if the title is supposed to be a reference to the Clapton-featuring godfathers of blues rock but it would be quite the coincidence otherwise, you would think, although it also makes me think of that disgusting Thickfreakness cover a little bit as well.