Welcome to the Deep Dive. We have a really custom
Deep Dive queued up for you today. We do, and
it's a fun one. Yeah, specifically tailored for
you, the listener. Yeah. Our mission today is
to unpack this really fascinating piece of music
history and, well... Music production. Right.
We're looking at the Black Keys and their Return
to Basics with their 2019 album, Let's Rock.
Such a great record. It really is. And we've
got a massive stack of notes here, a comprehensive
Wikipedia article detailing the creation, the
release, and the reception of this modern rock
staple. And our goal is to just extract the ultimate
insights. Exactly. So whether you are a music
production fanatic, a rock history buff. or you're
just curious how creative burnout can somehow
lead to this spectacular return to form, we have
you covered. And the stakes for this particular
record, they were incredibly high when you look
at the landscape of modern rock at that time.
Absolutely. Because this wasn't just another
standard album cycle for Dan Auerbach and Patrick
Carney. This was their ninth studio album, sure.
But it marked a massive five -year gap since
their previous release, which was 2014's Turn
Blue. Right. And in the fast -moving music industry,
I mean, half a decade off the radar. It might
as well be a lifetime. Five years is an eternity
for a... band that had been essentially dominating
the airwaves up to that point. Which tells us
this isn't just a story about technical specs
in a studio session. No. Looking at the larger
narrative arc, this entire era is a masterclass
in recognizing creative burnout. It serves as
a study on the undeniable value of walking away
from something when it stops feeling right. Yeah.
And the absolute magnetism of eventually going
back to your foundational roots. Okay, let's
unpack this. Yeah. Because to understand the
triumphant return, we really have to look at
the dark cloud that was hanging over them right
before they walked away. Right. The turn blue
era. Exactly. Let's rewind to 2014. That record
was their fourth time collaborating with producer
Danger Mouse. And the sound is dripping with
this heavy psychedelic rock and soul influence.
Lots of layers. Lots of layers. But there is
this distinct lingering melancholy to the whole
project. Well, the emotional weight of that album
wasn't fabricated. During those recording sessions,
Dan Auerbach was going through a very public
divorce. Yeah, which is tough. Incredibly tough.
And that heavy introspective reality naturally
seeped into the music. It was a stark departure
from the, you know, the raucous, gritty garage
rock party that defined their earlier work. Right.
So you have that deep emotional exhaustion and
then you compound it with the physical grind
of the music industry. They released Turn Blue
in May 2014 and immediately embarked on a massive
world tour. They were running on fumes from day
one. Literally day one. And things really come
to a head in January 2015. So they're down in
St. Bartholomew, ostensibly taking a breather,
and Patrick Carney gets hit by a rogue wave in
the ocean. A rogue wave, yeah. And we hear about
musicians getting injured all the time. But for
a professional drummer, the reports of a broken
and dislocated shoulder. I mean, that sounds
like a potential career ender. How severe was
this situation behind the scenes? Well, the source
material notes it was far more serious than Carney
wanted to admit to the public or the press at
the time. A shoulder injury for a drummer compromises
the entire mechanical foundation of how they
play. Right. You can't just power through that.
You can't. It required a significant amount of
time to properly heal, which forced the band
to start canceling tour dates. Which is a nightmare.
A total nightmare. It creates a massive logistical
and financial headache, obviously. But on a psychological
level, it physically stopped the runaway. way
train they had been forcing themselves to keep
driving. So they finally managed to conclude
the remaining tour dates in August 2015. This
was at the Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival
in San Francisco. Right. And that performance
is where the extended hiatus officially begins.
But Carney apparently had this deeply ominous
feeling about wrapping up the tour in that specific
city. Yeah, he pointed out a very specific, slightly
eerie piece of rock and roll trivia. Oh, yeah.
Yeah, the Sex Pistols, the band, the Beatles,
all of those legendary groups played their final
live concerts in San Francisco. Oh, wow. They
didn't even put that together. Right. So when
the Black Keys walked off that stage, Carney
was genuinely worried about the band's future.
He was left wondering if they had just succumbed
to the San Francisco curse. But it was actually
Dan Auerbach who officially pulled the plug and
made the call to take a break. Yeah, he was the
one who said stop. And Carney was reportedly
pretty frustrated by how long that break ended
up being. It was three solid years before they
got back in the studio together. Yeah. But he
eventually admitted it was the necessary call.
They were fundamentally burned out. The physical
exhaustion was only half the problem, though.
The core issue was a fundamental frustration
with their daily lives as working musicians.
Both Auerbach and Carney have consistently stated
that their absolute favorite part of their career
is the songwriting process. Being in the studio.
Exactly. The creation phase is what drives them.
But that joy had been completely eclipsed by
their relentless contractual touring commitments.
There's actually a quote from Auerbach in the
sources that perfectly captures this feeling
of being trapped by your own success. Oh, what
did he say? He says. We like creating the songs.
And I know you can't have your cake and eat it,
too. We've got to go perform them. But it's not
a good feeling to work so hard to do the thing
you love and just not ever be able to get to
create. It can be maddening. Maddening. Yeah,
it sounds like the touring monster essentially
ate their creative spark. I think this connects
directly to you, the listener, regardless of
what you do for a living. Sometimes stepping
away from the thing you love is the only viable
way to save your passion for it. That's so true.
Auerbach and Carney had to protect their creative
core, even if it meant risking their immense
momentum and industry standing to do it. And
their version of stepping away is wildly different
from how most people would define taking a break.
Right. They didn't just sit on a beach. No. They
take a hiatus from the Black Keys and proceed
to produce dozens of albums for other people.
It's crazy. Auerbach basically locks himself
in his Easy Eye sound studio down in Nashville.
He forms a whole new band, The Arcs, and puts
up their debut album, Yours Dreamily, in September
2015. Great record. Then he drops his second
solo album, Waiting on a Song, in 2017. He's
producing older Americana artists, working with
absolute legends like John Prine and Dwayne Eddy.
Just nonstop producing. He literally produced
more than a dozen albums while on a break, admitting
he wasn't thinking about the Black Keys at all.
His focus shifted entirely to the craft of producing,
and Carney's trajectory during this period is
equally staggering. Right. What was he up to?
He is producing and recording over a dozen albums
for artists like Calvin Johnson, Tennis, and
Dams of the West. But the most significant part
of Carney's hiatus is his collaboration with
Michelle Branch. Ah, yes. In 2017, he co -writes,
produces, and plays drums on her record Hopeless
Romantic. Which was a big deal. a massive industry
moment because it was her first studio album
in 14 years and during that production process
they started a relationship they end up having
a son together and they get married in april
2019. wow So this hiatus provided the necessary
space for both of them to literally build new
lives. They reset entirely. They are creatively
fulfilled, personally grounded and completely
free from the obligations of an arena touring
schedule. Yeah. So how do we get from that point
of total separation back to the Black Keys? Well,
the Catalyst was actually a hometown legend.
Auerbach was at his Easy Eye Sound studio collaborating
with Joe Walsh, another iconic guitar player.
And they start talking about Glenn Schwartz.
They ended up. jamming with Glenn Schwartz, who
was the original guitarist for the James Gang,
right there in the studio. Here's where it gets
really interesting. Because Auerbach records
about 90 minutes of his childhood idol playing
guitar during this session. Yep. It wasn't a
record executive demanding a new album that brought
them back together. It was this raw 90 -minute
tape. That tape served as a time machine. Schwartz
was a massive inspiration for both Auerbach and
Carney when they were young, playing a huge role
in why they pursued futures in rock music to
begin with. Right. Hearing that session brought
Auerbach right back to his youth in Cleveland,
attending Schwartz's live shows and then going
home to emulate those exact riffs while jamming
in a basement with Carney. Auerbach called it
the exact little nudge he needed. Right after
that session, he picks up the phone, calls his
old bandmate, and they finally put a reunion
on the books. Just like that. September 5, 2018.
10 a .m. Easy Eye Sound in Nashville. That is
the exact moment they ended the three -year hiatus.
And the chief recording engineer there, M. Alan
Parker, was watching this unfold. What did he
say? He observed that the first time Carney came
into the studio, they hadn't seen each other
in a while, but there was instant chemistry.
They became the Black Keys instantly. That's
awesome. Within minutes, they had their instruments
in hand, playing like zero time had passed. What's
crucial to understand about this reunion is their
approach to the recording process itself. After
spending years producing meticulously crafted,
highly structured albums for other artists, they
decided to completely strip away the guardrails
for their own project. Totally. They walked into
Easy Eye Sound with zero pre -written songs.
Nothing was prepared in advance. Auerbach didn't
want to overthink a single note. He wanted the
environment to be completely spontaneous. Yeah,
the sources detail how he would literally build
the tracks right there on the floor. He'd make
up the whole structure on the fly. Intro, verse,
chorus, turnaround, verse, chorus, bridge, turnaround,
outro. Just calling it out. Just calling out
the arrangement live in the room. He would ad
-lib the vocal melodies and simply replace them
with actual lyrics later. He relied completely
on Carney's intuition, stating that Carney just
has a knack for knowing exactly what to do. It
highlights a fascinating creative symbiosis.
They adopted a ruthless editing process too.
They would work on a specific idea for about
an hour. If it was clicking, they chased it.
And if not? If not, they dropped it immediately
and moved to the next concept. This purely spontaneous
approach led to a very strict, albeit accidental,
limitation. Halfway through the sessions, they
stopped and realized they hadn't used a single
keyboard on any of the tracks. Not one keyboard.
Yeah. Which is a massive departure when you consider
their previous work with Danger Mouse was heavily
layered with synths and atmospheric keys. Completely
different sound. But once they noticed the absence,
they made a conscious decision to lock it in.
Carney called the album an homage to electric
guitar. Just guitar, drums, and vocals. Although
there is one exception. Right. There was one
tiny exception for the production nerds out there.
The only synthesized sound on the entire album
is a string pad on the song Walk Across the Water.
But it didn't come from a keyboard. No, it came
from an MTI auto orchestra, which is this incredibly
niche, vintage, analog drum machine from the
70s that plays these cheesy backing tracks. It's
basically a rhythm box. Exactly. Aside from that
single layer. The no keyboard rule held firm.
It was just the two of them, alongside two backing
vocalists, Lisa Hans and Ashley Wilcoxon. They
co -produced the entire project themselves. And
when you look at the sheer output generated by
this limitation, it's staggering. Oh, yeah. After
three years apart, in the very first 30 minutes
of being in the same room, they wrote their first
musical idea, which became the track. breaking
down. Two complete songs written on day one alone.
Crazy. By the end of week one, they had 15 or
16 workable ideas. By the time they wrapped up
the sessions, which Carney estimated was only
about three and a half to four weeks of total
studio time, spread out over a few months. They
had generated 27 unique ideas and completely
finished 13 of them. Removing the pressure and
reconnecting with the simple joy of playing together
completely opened the floodgates. It really did.
But as joyous as that recording process was,
the The inspiration for the album's title introduces
a totally different, surprisingly dark tone to
the project. We have to talk about where the
name Let's Rock actually came from, because the
origin is incredibly macabre. It stems from a
local news story that Auerbach happened to read
in the studio. Yeah. On November 1st, 2018, the
state of Tennessee executed a convicted murderer
named Edmund Zagorski via the electric chair.
It was a highly publicized event locally because
it was the first time Tennessee had used the
electric chair in 11 years. Right. Auerbach was
reading about this in a physical copy of the
Tennessean, a local paper that someone had just
left sitting around the studio control room.
The newspaper story detailed Zagorski's final
moments. When the prison guard asked him if he
had any last words before they proceeded, Zagorski
just looked up and said, Let's rock. Months later,
when the band needed an album title, Auerbach
couldn't get those two words out of his head.
He just couldn't shake it. He found the phrase
to be deeply absurd in that context, but also
strangely fitting for their current situation.
They had just spent weeks making this raw, back
-to -basics electric guitar record. To Auerbach,
stumbling across that phrase felt like a bizarre
gift from the universe. He also fully embraced
the massive layer of irony attached to it. He
knew exactly what the general public would assume
when they saw an album by a famous rock band
titled Let's Rock. Oh, of course. He wanted to
actively mislead people. He stated explicitly
that 99 % of people are going to think the album
is about rock and roll culture, which is the
thing they actually like least. Right. He said,
we're not rock and roll guys. We fucking hate
rock and roll guys. We always have. He went on
to explain that the idea of pyrotechnics on stage
and laser shows is just completely goofy to them.
They use the most cliche phrase in the entire
genre to name a record that is made specifically
to reject the bloated theatrical cliches of modern
rock music. It is the ultimate anti -gimmick
statement. Exactly. They just wanted to play
their instruments in a room. And that anti -gimmick
philosophy didn't just stop at the title. It
extended straight into how they handled the business
side of releasing the album. Yeah, they completely
refused to play the modern industry game. They
dropped the lead single, Lohi, in March 2019,
followed by the official album announcement in
April. But when it came to actually selling the
record, they drew a hard line in the sand regarding
bundling. Which was huge at the time. I want
to push on this for a second because in 2019,
if you weren't bundling merchandise or concert
tickets with your album sales, you were essentially
handing your chart position over to an artist
who was. Why were they so confident in taking
that risk? Because their definition of success
had fundamentally shifted during the hiatus.
Patrick Carney was highly vocal about this practice.
He openly called bundling a dimmock that exists
solely as a way to game the charts. His perspective
was incredibly blunt. He said people are either
going to buy the record because they want to
hear it or they aren't. He stated the only metric
he was genuinely concerned with was whether people
actually enjoyed the music. That raises an interesting
question for you listening right now. regarding
authenticity in your own field. How often do
we rely on the equivalent of gimmicks to prove
our success to the outside world? All the time.
We polish the vanity metrics. We bundle our achievements
to make them look bigger than they are. The Black
Keys had the confidence to strip all of that
away and let the raw work defend itself. And
the raw work proved to be incredibly resilient.
Lo -Hi became an absolute monster of a single,
making Billboard history in the process. It really
did. It became the first song ever to simultaneously
top four different Billboard rock charts. Mainstream
rock, adult alternative songs, rock airplay,
and alternative songs. Number one on all four
formats at the exact same time. And when the
full album dropped on June 28, 2019, it debuted
at number four on the U .S. Billboard 200. It
moved 52 ,000 album -equivalent units in its
first week. Which is the metric the industry
uses to combine physical album sales with digital
streaming numbers to give a true picture of a
project's popularity in the modern era? Right.
It hit the top 10 in over a dozen countries.
Commercially, it was a massive validation of
their back -to -basics approach. But critically,
it was a bit more of a mixed bag. What's fascinating
here is analyzing that critical divide. The album
sits at a 73 out of 100 on Metacritic. The reviews
essentially split into two distinct camps based
entirely on what the reviewer expected a Black
Keys album to sound like in 2019. Okay, let's
look at the positive side first. You have legacy
publications jumping right on board. What was
the consensus from the critics who actually bought
into this stripped -down approach? Critics who
appreciated the raw energy absolutely loved it.
David Frick at Rolling Stone praised the band's
heightened purism. He compared it directly to
their gritty 2003 garage rock album Thick Freakness,
just recorded in much higher fidelity. The Times
and Pace magazine echoed that sentiment, calling
it a feel -good, back -to -basics summer barbecue
record. The Independent noted that while it might
be a genre pastiche, meaning it lovingly imitates
and collages past rock styles rather than inventing
a new one, it is executed with incredible fiendishly
catchy skill. But then you have the critiques
from the other side of the aisle. These are the
writers who clearly missed the ambition of the
Danger Mouse era. Precisely. Victoria Segal at
Mojo wrote that while the songs are tightly constructed,
it feels as if the emotional wiring has been
botched. Ouch. Yeah. She felt there was an over
-familiarity, almost a lethargy to the lyricism
compared to the heavy introspection of Turn Blue.
Ryan Daly at NME was even harsher. What did they
say? She called the album undercooked with a
distinct lack of impact, stating it did not sound
like two veteran musicians reclaiming their best
years. Emotional wiring botched is a tough critique
to swallow. But then you have Evan Rytlowski,
a pitchfork, who bridges the gap between those
two polarizing opinions perfectly. He really
did. He pointed out that intentionally removing
Danger Mouse's studio flourishes simply left
more room for pure guitar riffs. He asked the
ultimate question. Was the album ambitious? No.
But, as he wrote, effective. Swish. That synthesis
captures the entire project perfectly. Lack was
never meant to be a grand experimental opus.
It was designed to be exactly what it is. Two
guys in a room, remembering why they love playing
music together. So what does this all mean? If
we zoom out, we just traced an incredible, turbulent
journey. Yeah. Full circle. Exactly. They reunite
on a random Tuesday at 10 a .m., completely throw
out the keyboards, fire the outside producers,
write 27 spontaneous ideas in a month, and name
the resulting album after the dark final words
of a guy in the electric chair. Entirely because
they find the traditional rock and roll persona
totally goofy. Right. It is a remarkable sequence
of events that actually leaves you with something
profound to consider, especially when looking
at the modern landscape. We just watched a band
hit number one by completely rejecting the modern
playbook. Yes. As AI, algorithmic precision and
digital perfection become the standard across
almost every single industry, it makes you wonder,
will human error, the raw, unpolished, zero guardrails
approach we saw in the creation of Let's Rock,
actually become the ultimate premium commodity
of the future? That's a great point. When everything
can be produced perfectly, maybe the most valuable
thing you can offer is the authentic sound of
two people just figuring it out in a room. Sometimes
the imperfections are the exact thing that makes
the art permanent. We want to thank you so much
for joining us on this custom deep dive. We hope
you walk away with a fresh appreciation for the
art of pairing things back and trusting your
own raw instincts. Absolutely. Keep questioning,
keep learning, and do yourself a favor. Go spin.
Let's rock with a totally new perspective. We'll
catch you on the next deep dive.