{"id":9138,"date":"2011-12-07T06:56:45","date_gmt":"2011-12-07T11:56:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=9138"},"modified":"2011-12-07T06:56:45","modified_gmt":"2011-12-07T11:56:45","slug":"midweek-music-break-the-black-keys-lonely-boy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2011\/12\/midweek-music-break-the-black-keys-lonely-boy\/","title":{"rendered":"Midweek Music Break: The Black Keys, “Lonely Boy”"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The Black Keys have been pumping out well-received music for almost ten years now. Critics love it; audiences love it; and to even skim the Wikipedia entry about them<\/a>\u00a0made me wonder, a little, how film and TV-show soundtrack producers would have done without them in that decade.<\/p>\n

But — true to form — I’ve always seemed to be looking in the wrong direction. When their 2010 album, Brothers<\/em>, won a Grammy as best alt-rock album of the year… um, yeah… well… [whistling to fill embarrassed silence]<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Their most recent, El Camino<\/em>, just came out yesterday; it already seems headed for the same level of acclaim as Brothers.<\/em>\u00a0Metacritic<\/a> puts it at a composite 84 “Metascore,” vs.<\/em> 82 for the previous album. Yet reading those reviews, even just their capsule summaries, raises a weird question: have they all listened to all of the band’s music? (Some of the criticism implies that El Camino<\/em>\u00a0burns the bridges carefully built by earlier releases; some insists that it’s rehashing history. Go figure.)<\/p>\n

Obviously, I’m in no position myself to judge El Camino<\/em>\u00a0next to The Black Keys’ other stuff. But I’ve at least\u00a0listened to this one, and now I’m really<\/em>\u00a0embarrassed to have overlooked the band for so long. I couldn’t decide which of several tunes to include in today’s post… and then I saw the video for “Lonely Boy,” the first track: an instant classic in the get-up-and-<\/em>dance genre.<\/p>\n