Brothers by The Black Keys

When it was announced that Danger Mouse would be working with the Black Keys on their 2008 album, Attack & Release, it seemed like a fresh start for a band that had run out of ideas. While DM indeed brought some psychedelic side dishes to Dan Auerbach and Pat Carney's meat-and-potatoes blues-rock table-- a little pan flute here, some spaghetti Western guitar licks there-- Attack & Release had its share of samey-sounding midtempo cuts, sugges ting that the duo were content to write variations on the same theme. Subsequent side projects (both worked in Damon Dash's not-disastrous rap-rock experiment Blakroc, and Carney formed the all-percussion group Drummer) suggested that they probably felt this creative stagnation, too. As for Auerbach's basically-a-Black-Keys-album solo effort, Keep It Hid: guy's gotta get it out of his system somehow.

After four albums of fuzzed-up garage-blues, in 2008 it suddenly seemed as if The Black Keys didn’t want to be The Black Keys any more. First of all they roped in Dangermouse to produce their Attack & Release album; that still basically sounded like its predecessors with some extra production flourishes, so they went back to the drawing board.