09-08-2025
Album Review: The Black Keys, No Rain, No Flowers
Grammy Award-winning duo return with eclectic 13th LP. 7.5/10
It could be safely argued that Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney have grown ever more commercial in their musical output over the years. The Ohio duo's early albums spilled over with raw garage blues-rock, but since their breakthrough sixth record, Brothers, in 2010, they've gradually toned down the noise and turned up the radio-friendliness.
There's nothing wrong with wanting more people to hear your songs and if you can make a few dollars at the same time, more power to ye. And there are still huge swathes of this 13th long-player that are easily recognisable as The Black Keys, from the vintage r'n'b of 'Babygirl' to the crunching guitar assault of 'Man On A Mission' (complete with Sabbath-esque middle-eight) or 'A Little Too High', whose gospel-tinged southern boogie sounds like Primal Scream covering the Allman Brothers.
However, this album is perhaps a little wilfully eclectic for its own good. Apparently inspired by the band's 'record hangs', where Auerbach and Carney take turns spinning rare vinyl, it's a melting pot of genres and styles that feels more like a compilation than a cohesive album in its own right.
The mid-paced title track could be an Arcade Fire cast-off, albeit a decent one. The laid-back guitar pop of 'Kiss It' is Steely Dan jamming with Jack White, while the yearning 'Neon Moon' is the sound of U2's '40' put through a Creedence blender. The extremely polished 'Make You Mine' has a falsetto chorus straight from the Bee Gees songbook in their Seventies' pomp, and yet it's impossible to dislike – indeed, the more listens you give it, the more you realise its brilliance.
So a little too shiny and genre-fluid, perhaps, although still bursting at the seams with hummable melodies.
