The Black Keys: Attack and Release

When the most interesting thing about your album is either the guy who died before recording it, or the guy you hired to produce it, you may have to contemplate returning to the drawing board. Alas, this one seems to be rusted and covered in large amounts of bindweed.

The Black Keys, often known as the dying man's White Stripes hover above many ponds, bluegrass, blues-rock and a dash of hip-hop would be the name-age of some of the aforementioned bodies of water. Whilst the mixture is a smooth one and by no means immiscible, they never really draw anything interesting from their tributaries. Instead of being a wonderful concoction of cultures, "Attack and Release" merely ambles along as a slightly modernised blues-rock album.

The riffs that populate the release do nothing to evoke reaction, and the vocals grow ever more despairing as time goes on. To pull off music this bleak and depressing, you need to make it immensely riveting.

Producer, Brian 'Danger Mouse' Burton does his job well, never drawing unnecessary attention towards himself, but all a producer can do is put the pieces of the jigsaw together, he cannot go beyond the materials at hand. On tracks like "Remember When? (Side B)" he is given something to work with. The preacher-esque yowls of Dan Auerbach slot perfectly over the blood-pumping riff rendered in perfect coarseness, finally providing the kind of bite that doesn't require a layer of Poli-Grip to be applied first. Elsewhere, the augmentation of organs, flutes and studio sparkles lends a mist to the otherwise stark decayed ruins.

It could be, that writing the album for a third party (Ike Turner, who died last December before he could follow through on his end of the collaboration) proved the bands undoing, or maybe it was the transition from atmospheric live recordings to the the barren wastelands of the generic studio space, but if there is was - at some point - heart in this album, then it has clearly been housed in an icebox for the last few years.

That the album is populated with songs like "Lies", with it's 'death march rhythm' and even more austere tone makes spotting the occasional gems hard work, but eventually rewarding. You might want to consider though, at the end of the day, if this is the most suitable place to set up the mine.