For just two men, The Black Keys make one hell of a racket. Energetic and intense, their live show is one of the most justifiably famous in the world of rock. But such exuberance must take its toll, because this morning’s interview, to promote the band’s headlining appearance at the Pyramid Rock festival this New Year’s Eve, finds drummer Patrick Carney in a subdued mode unrecognisable from his on-stage verve. He speaks slowly, the words an effort. “I’m braindead right now” he concedes. “Just got back from tour”
Said tour, in support of their critically acclaimed fifth album Attack and Release, included a run of Australian dates in June that Carney remembers fondly, if not quite in detail.”Last time we didn’t see all that much, it was a pretty quick trip” he explains, nominating Darwin as a favourite Australian destination and, improbably, folktronica wunderkind New Buffalo as the Australian act he most enjoys. Despite being somewhat ambivalent about the experience of playing festivals (“it can be good” Carney ventures) and the occasion (“I don’t really like New Year’s Eve that much”), spirits are high for the band’s return to these shores. “We’re looking forward to playing” he says simply.
Fans thrilled by the rendition of Captain Beefheart’s “I’m Glad” seen on that tour will be, well, glad, to hear more covers are in the offing, while there are also plans to add to the stage props which included a large tyre the last time they toured Australia, a nod to their home state’s largest industry: “We’re into inflatables” Carney says, enigmatically. Also expect a raft of live recordings to surface after their visit; the band have a policy of allowing audio taping and Carney estimates he has some 200 live recordings lying around, but says there are no plans to release them at this stage.
Having previously recorded their own material, including one album that was made in the basement of Carney’s apartment, the pair took a creative left turn on Attack and Release when they teamed up with the uber-hip producer and Gnarls Barkley member Danger Mouse. Seen as an unlikely pairing in some quarters, the band nonetheless found Danger Mouse a “smart guy” with a “pretty laidback” working style and enjoyed the fact that he worked quickly, as they had been known to do in the past, with their album Thickfreakness famously being recorded in a single day. There was also a fortuitous career alignment between the band and their producer: “We wanted to work with him because we wanted to do something different. He wanted to work with us because he wanted to do something different” Carney explains.
Another interesting collaborator on Attack and Release was Marc Ribot, who appears on album highlight “So He Won’t Break” and who played alongside Ralph Carney, Patrick’s uncle, in Tom Waits’ band. Carney explains his uncle, a veteran saxophone player, who also played with the B-52s, was instrumental in widening his musical palette as a youngster, introducing him to the garage music and blues which inform his band’s vital, stripped-back sound: “it’s hard to really get into stuff like that when you’re living in a place like Akron”
For those unfamiliar with Akron, the Ohio city the band call home, Carney explains “I guess it’s a lot like Wollongong, only not on the ocean…it’s a fairly liberal place, it was very working class”. Very much the hometown heroes, the Black Keys are now a major drawcard in Ohio: “We play pretty big places…we’re playing in Akron to about 2 or 3000 people” and their schedule is typically jam-packed with shows in the months leading up to their return to these shores.
It’s a long way from Akron to Australia, so with such a tight schedule and only Carney and Dan Auerbach, friends since school, in the band, is there ever acrimony in the Black Keys camp? “We get into squabbles, but they’re usually over some ridiculous bullshit” Carney laughs. Ah yes, the ups and downs of rock ‘n’ roll, the weary mornings that inevitably follow the nights of triumph. Tired as Carney may sound at the moment, nobody who has seen The Black Keys at their explosive best would bet against their Australian shows falling firmly into the latter category.
to listen to their music now on 