“Peaches!”, the American duo’s new covers album, skirts the edge of self-parody during improvised sessions that sometimes manage to convince.
Fourteen records into their career and the obsession remains intact: to dive back into a glorified and mythologized past of blues-rock. With Peaches!, The Black Keys undertake a precarious task: turning a return to their roots into an act of resistance. A risky bet, especially for a duo frequently accused of treading on old ground, or even getting stuck in a cozy “retro-mania.”
Recorded live, Peaches! asserts total authenticity. Everything is captured in the same room, with no safety net: cracked vocals, guitars that slide, amps pushed to saturation. A method the Ohio duo hadn’t dared push so far since their beginnings.
The Black Keys play rock as if fighting themselves
On You Got to Lose, the lead single, Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney set the scene: razor-sharp riffs, a greasy groove, drums that hit like a punch. She Does It Right transforms a Dr. Feelgood boogie into a greasy trance, while Fireman Ring the Bell (borrowed from R.L. Burnside) slides into controlled chaos, blending martial rhythm with guitars that ooze like open wounds.
Tomorrow Night, with its precise and hypnotic intro, pours a harsh melancholy, as if these improvised sessions were as much about letting go as about trying to soothe. Because beneath the apparent spontaneity, Peaches! bears the mark of a troubled period for Dan Auerbach.
Looking more and more into the rear-view mirror, the duo sometimes edges toward emptiness. Peaches! occasionally feels déjà vu, as if the Black Keys were recycling their own obsessions in a loop. Garage blues, nasty saturations, rhythmic gimmicks—all of it purrs along, sometimes gently, in a premium nostalgia mode.
Peaches! is a paradoxical record, at once rooted and a vital jolt forward. By digging the same groove, The Black Keys sometimes flirt with self-parody. And yet, it’s hard to resist entirely. Because when it works, there are guts and sweat in these ten tracks carved to the bone. Peaches! reminds us of one thing: The Black Keys play rock as if they are fighting themselves—with that desperate belief that music can still save something.
Peaches! (Easy Eye Sound/WEA). Released May 1.
