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Los Angeles Times
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
The Black Keys were nearly buried by a brutal year. A new album seeks to ‘get things back on track'
For the Black Keys, 2025 is all about getting back to doing what they love — making records and touring — on their own terms. That's their way of putting behind them the disaster that was 2024: their worst-charting album since 2006, the cancellation of an arena tour after ticket sales lagged, and the firing and public castigation of legendary manager Irving Azoff as well as their PR team. Their new album's title, 'No Rain, No Flowers,' offers a positive spin on growing from the experience, which guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney echoed in our conversation ahead of their show at the Greek Theatre on Tuesday. 'This is an opportunity for us to get out of the pressure cooker of a way of touring that we realized was unsustainable and was not ideal for the fans or enjoyable for us,' says Carney. 'We like being an underdog,' Auerbach adds. The two grew up playing wiffle ball and touch football in Akron, Ohio, but were a grade apart and didn't form a band until after their brothers (who were close friends) urged them to jam together. They found power in their raw, stripped-down blues and rock and eventually formed the Black Keys. But they had to build a friendship as they were building a career. 'We'd never gone to a party together or socialized much and then we found ourselves in a van driving to shows so our friendship had a big learning curve,' Carney recalls. They started in 2001 as the quintessential indie act — their first two albums were recorded in Carney's basement — but by decade's end they were a rock band on a roll: 'Brothers,' reached No. 3 on the Billboard charts; 'El Camino' made it to No. 2 and 'Turn Blue' took them all the way to the top. Those three albums garnered 11 Grammy nominations and the band was selling out arenas and headlining Coachella. Naturally, some early fans grumbled as they moved beyond their lo-fi sound. 'I remember right before 'El Camino' thinking this might be too rock-and-roll for our base,' Carney says, 'but to me the change was a sign we weren't phoning it in.' But despite the success, the band eventually burned out. At their commercial zenith, they went on hiatus. 'We're not contrarian,' says Carney, the more voluble of the two. 'But we had accomplished all this stuff, and we felt it was time to get off of the roller coaster.' In their time apart, both men produced other artists while Auerbach also released an album with a new band, the Arcs, and a solo album, both earning critical acclaim but lower sales than the Black Keys' music. When they reunited in 2019, they say their priorities had changed. 'You can try to make another No. 1 album, but the goal became clear to us: We have this special relationship and if we want it to stay healthy the path needs to be interesting to us,' Carney says, adding that the demands of 200 on the road and the constant media obligations they'd had earlier was 'not sustainable for us at this point. It's a lot being away from your kids.' But rock's role in popular culture has continued shrinking and although the band returned to the Billboard top 10 with 'Let's Rock'; 'Delta Kream,' an album of country blues covers; and 'Dropout Boogie,' they didn't generate the same kind of attention and some fans now complained they missed the era of 'Brothers' and 'El Camino.' 'We've made it a little bit harder for ourselves,' Carney adds. 'If we had just made 'El Camino' over and over again or alternated between 'Brothers' and 'El Camino' we'd probably be playing baseball stadiums now.' But Auerbach says they always wanted to evolve similar to the bands they loved like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. 'We're music geeks who love records so that was something we aspired to,' he says. 'We didn't want to repeat ourselves so we wanted to do something different with each album.' He says that the two love seeking out obscure old singles and when they're in the studio together the goal remains the same. 'It's like when you find a song that you've never heard before that blows your mind,' he says. 'That's what we're looking for when we're working in the studio together, to re-create that feeling you get in your gut.' Auerbach adds that after starting out just the two of them in isolation — in a basement in Akron — they found they loved collaborating, working with the producer Danger Mouse on their biggest albums and, more recently, musicians like Beck, Noel Gallagher, ZZ Tops' Billy Gibbons and rapper Juicy J. That said, Carney argues that even when they've worked with collaborators, 'at the end of the day it'll sound like us. It doesn't matter who else we work with, our aesthetic is always gonna shine through.' But with the combination of the shifting music landscape and their exploring new sounds, their popularity seemed on the wane. Last year, 'Ohio Players' peaked at just 26. Then came the touring fiasco, for which they have largely blamed Azoff — who has been investigated by the Department of Justice for colluding with Live Nation (which he used to run) — saying he put the band in the wrong rooms among other things. Carney tweeted, angrily and profanely, about how the band got screwed but deleted them to avoid being sued. When they finally spoke publicly, to Rolling Stone, they confessed to being naive about how the music industry consolidation was harming bands. They called the European tour ' the most poorly orchestrated tour we had been on' and Carney said, 'we fired their a—' of Azoff's company but were more circumspect in their quotes, not saying the words 'Live Nation.' Their new publicist had called me in advance saying not to bring up these issues but to let the band do it. When that didn't happen and my time was almost up I raised the issues. After a question or two the publicist tried to shut things down, but Carney said, 'It's the L.A. Times. Let's do the interview. Come on. We're here' and talked generally about the industry being problematic. 'We're just trying to make music and tour in a f—ed up industry.' Carney says the band is now more involved in planning and is 'very methodical' about how long it'll tour and about choosing the venues, adding that the smaller venues offer a better fan experience and a less expensive one since they don't need video screens for the back of an arena. Auerbach says they're also tinkering with their setlists, though he says their catalog is now so deep they can't please everyone. 'But we definitely have our fans in mind when it comes to making selections.' As they reposition themselves and 'get things back on track,' Carney says, the duo are now in a good place despite last year. 'Our friendship is stronger than it ever has been,' he says. 'We've been through every possible thing that you can go through so we can kinda get through anything now. And there's still a lot of joy in making music together.'
The Guardian
23-03-2025
- General
- The Guardian
Brushing up the past: a graceful French home has art at its heart
When Marine Koprivnjak and Victor Chabaud, founders of interior design agency Maison MAVI, bought their home in the south of France in 2020, they wanted to renovate everything themselves in their spare time. 'It was an adventure that lasted longer than expected,' Marine says. They found the house online. It's a 1920s villa in the centre of a small town the Luberon with countryside all around and Aix-en-Provence just 20 minutes away by car. It has two floors, covers a total of 130sqm, with a patio in front of the house and a simple room layout. 'It's practically the classic Provençal house with the facade painted in warm earth tones, white-framed windows and sage green shutters. It was irresistible,' says Marine. However, having been abandoned for around 20 years, it was run-down, the roof leaked and the small garden looked like a jungle. Marine, a colourist and graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Marseille, took on the mantle of interior designer for the project, while Victor, a painter, brought her ideas to life. To transform the house, the couple revised the original layout, removing some walls, and converted the old kitchen into their office. From the outside, everything stayed much as it was. The real surprise comes when you go inside and are plunged into an incredible kaleidoscope of colour. Marine uses colour to define volumes, following the footsteps of the great technicolour architects she studied, from Barragàn to Bofill. Strokes of green, yellow, burgundy, blue, brown and violet, interspersed with lots of pink, run through the rooms, interrupted here and there by more neutral walls, 'To surprise without disturbing,' says Marine. She explains that Victor created 50 custom shades of various colours specifically for the house, mixing natural pigments with clay and plaster. All the shades used for the walls and ceilings of the house are natural pigments from Ressource Peintures. The couple designed the offbeat wall niches in the living room themselves, artfully using colour to outline the recesses. The unique ceramic pieces are by Maison MAVI; the Arcs wall lamps with their scalloped edges are by Muller Van Severen for HAY and the terrazzo floor was designed by Marine in a palette to match the dove-coloured paint on the wall. The living room also has a central fireplace painted lavender and a modular bookshelf designed by Marine using Montana Furniture; in the foreground HK Living modular sofas and marble-topped Plec coffee table by Antoni Pallejà Office for RS Barcelona. A vase sculpture is one of Victor's own. The kitchen plays on warm tones of pink, terracotta and beige, which contrast with the blue hallway leading to the guest bathroom. Shapes in the kitchen are just as bold and interesting – from a chunky Mingle table by Ferm Living to the simple curves of Rey chairs. The modular, Frame kitchen is from Reform, which sits alongside arched alcove shelving. Just beyond the entrance, the staircase leading to the bedrooms is the original one, repainted with a sage green handrail and burgundy steps; a curved ceramic light-fitting by Pani Jurek mimics the arched entrance it hangs in front of. In the master bedroom, a Marie Olsson blanket and ColorTherapis cushions adorn the bed. Drawers and cupboards feature contrasting coloured doors 'I thought of a palette of tones that work well together at first glance, and change with the light during different times of the day,' says Marine, mentioning the German artist Josef Albers and his perception of colour. It was 'a true four-handed job, because our tastes have a lot in common. That harmony, in my opinion, is the real requirement for a quality project.' The results speak for themselves. For information, go to
