The Black Keys performed their second and third consecutive sold-out shows in New York City last night, at SummerStage in Central Park and at Terminal 5. The New York Times says: "At their best and starkest, they can make a growling riff feel loose and woozy, tempos fluctuating as if on a column of air." The New York Post says they "made an incredible amount of music for two guys who obviously know size doesn’t matter when it comes to the blues ... [T]he guys were unstoppable."
The Black Keys performed their second and third consecutive sold-out shows in New York City last night, following an evening show at SummerStage in Central Park (their second in two days) with a late-night set at Terminal 5.
New York Times music critic Nate Chinen attended the previous night's SummerStage set, which he reviews in a piece titled "An Underground Duo Finds Unfamiliar Perch Atop the Charts." In the review, the title of which references the arrival of the band's recent Nonesuch release, Brothers, at No. 3 on the Billboard charts, Chinen examines the expansion of the duo of Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney to include two additional touring musicians, keyboardist Leon Michels and the bassist Nick Movshon, to flush out the album's fuller sound on the road.
Nevertheless, the true power of The Black Keys comes from Auerbach and Carney. "At their best and starkest, they can make a growling riff feel loose and woozy, tempos fluctuating as if on a column of air," writes Chinen. "This happened here on vintage fare like 'Thickfreakness' and 'The Breaks,' but the best two-man operations arrived later. 'Your Touch' was the first song played after the auxiliary had come and gone, and it conveyed a righteous fury, along with something like relief."
Read the complete concert review at nytimes.com.
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The New York Post reviews the show as well under the headline, "Keys Unlock Beautiful City Night." Reviewer Dan Aquilante focuses on the power of the duo as well, saying the Auerbach and Carney "made an incredible amount of music for two guys who obviously know size doesn’t matter when it comes to the blues." The amount of music they made had a positive impact on the feel of the overall set as well. "When the Keys opened for Pearl Jam back in May with a short set, they were good," Aquilante recalls, "but the brevity hurt them getting their momentum going. At this 90-minute concert the guys were unstoppable."
Read the review at nypost.com.
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The Huffington Post says "2010 has been a good year for The Black Keys." Reviewer Alex Jacobs says their new album, Brothers, "finds the duo splitting the difference between the distorted bare-bones blues that characterized their earlier work and the more layered, psychedelic style they adopted on 2008's Attack & Release." The SummerStage performance, "like their latest record," he writes, "balanced their signature sound with new styles and sonic ideas without sounding contrived."
Says Jacobs, "Rhythmically, they lock in together so tight that you could imagine one brain controlling both drums and guitar. Sonically, they produce so much power that you can't believe that just two people are making all that racket."
And for those New Yorkers who were unable to make one of this week's three area shows, Jacobs insists: "Next time they come to town, don't miss them."
Read the concert review at huffingtonpost.com.
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There are plenty of photos from SummerStage at brooklynvegan.com and prefixmag.com. And there are many more full sets to come as The Black Keys continue their North American tour through the East Coast and up into Canada this weekend. For more information, visit nonesuch.com/on-tour. And to pick up a copy of Brothers with high-quality MP3s included at no additional cost at checkout, head to the Nonesuch Store.
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