(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HOWLIN' FOR YOU")
THE BLACK KEYS: (Singing) All right.
EMILY FENG, HOST:
In the early aughts and early 2010s, many listeners found The Black Keys through commercials. There was Nissan and Cadillac and Victoria's Secret. The duo's bluesy rock 'n' roll has a grungy, up-tempo feel that feels subversive, and that style win them half a dozen Grammys.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GOLD ON THE CEILING")
THE BLACK KEYS: (Singing) They want to get my gold on the ceiling. I ain't blind. Just a matter of time.
FENG: Fifteen years later, they're still going strong, and they're experimenting with some variations to that bleeding electric guitar sound. Their new album "Peaches!" is something of a return to the blues-heavy rhythms that drove their early career. Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney of The Black Keys join me now from their tour bus on the side of the road on the way to Mississippi. Thank you, guys, and welcome.
PATRICK CARNEY: Thanks for having us.
DAN AUERBACH: Thank you.
FENG: So I want to begin with your lead track. It's a cover of a Willie Griffin song called "Where There's Smoke, There's Fire." Can we listen to a little bit of it.
AUERBACH: Yeah.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WHERE THERE'S SMOKE, THERE'S FIRE")
WILLIE GRIFFIN: (Singing) There's fire. I'm burning for you. I need your love.
FENG: I'm curious, why did this song call out to you?
AUERBACH: Well, I think that the song - just the recording, the original recording - is just kind of haunting and spooky and weird and maniacally out of tune. And I just remember, the first time I heard it, it kind of blew me away.
FENG: And what did you do with that magic? How did you adapt it to something that sounded more like The Black Keys?
AUERBACH: Well, we didn't think about it, honestly, and we didn't reference the original. And, you know, most of the people in the group recording with us had never heard the original, either. So I think that's really what helped, you know?
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WHERE THERE'S SMOKE, THERE'S FIRE")
THE BLACK KEYS: (Singing) Where there's smoke, babe, there's fire. Where there's smoke, babe, there's fire.
AUERBACH: So I wrote the lyrics out and had them on a music stand and kind of just figured out the chords. And we just - we went for it without really any plan. We kind of got to the core of what we sound like more so than if we'd tried to do something and spent hours and weeks, you know, honing it, you know? I think what came out was basic gut instinct.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WHERE THERE'S SMOKE, THERE'S FIRE")
THE BLACK KEYS: (Singing) Flashing lights mean trouble. You got to get to me so we can cuddle.
FENG: So what makes this album a little bit different from your previous ones is a good number of these songs are covers on this record. You've said before you don't want this album to be known as a covers record. So tell me what the difference is.
CARNEY: Well, you know, I think that the story of this album really is that Dan's father got diagnosed with terminal cancer, and we were supposed to be on tour. And with his father dying, we canceled our tour, and we found ourselves at home in Nashville and Dan's dad dying.
It was a very heavy time, and I thought that Dan needed, like, something to do rather than just hang in there with his father. So we - I suggested we go in the studio and cut some songs. Dan had this list of covers, and it was kind of the best therapy, was to get in there with some of our friends. We would cut the song one or two times, most of the time not even listen back to what we had just done and just move on.
And we never really took a toll of what we had done until, months later, we sat down to listen to what was recorded. And that's kind of when we realized that there was an album here. So it's - in a way, the record's - it's almost like a tribute to Dan's dad. This is kind of like the version of The Black Keys that Dan's dad, Chuck, appreciated the most, you know, the raw, kind of off-the-cuff way that we started.
FENG: Dan, is there a song on the album that you feel really reminds you of your dad, epitomizes who he was?
AUERBACH: Yeah, I think there's a song called "It's A Dream."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "IT'S A DREAM")
THE BLACK KEYS: (Singing) Is it a dream that's got a hold on me?
AUERBACH: That, probably, he would have really extra appreciated. You know, just, like, the minimalism of it and how raw it is, I think he would have loved.
FENG: Did the process of making that album, the time period in which it was made - does that carry over to how the album sounds now and what it means to you?
AUERBACH: I think the sound of the record is - boy, you know, I mean, it's the sound of me grieving and going through all of the emotions and kind of letting it out a little bit. You know, I would spend a couple hours a day in the studio with these guys, just kind of getting away from the hard reality of what was going on. And it was a release for me, and I got to go in there and scream a little bit.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "IT'S A DREAM")
THE BLACK KEYS: (Singing) Why you want to do that to me?
AUERBACH: And, you know, I think that it ended up - we unintentionally made something that was, like, so direct, we couldn't have really made it any other way. That's why I kind of feel like it's almost, like, the most natural Black Keys record since our very first one.
FENG: Is there a recording on the album that you really want to highlight where you feel that feeling of jamming together, of release, really comes through?
CARNEY: For me, when I sat down to kind of listen to what we had there, the song that first kind of, like, put hair up on the back of my neck was "Tomorrow Night."
(SOUNDBITE OF THE BLACK KEYS SONG, "TOMORROW NIGHT")
CARNEY: I don't know what it is about it, but I actually had never heard the original version of this song before we cut it. Dan just pulled it out and played the riff and kind of showed us a little bit of what it was.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE BLACK KEYS SONG, "TOMORROW NIGHT")
CARNEY: When I went back and listened to the original after we did this and then listened to our version, I was just like, oh, my God, like, you know, there's just - there's some energy here. You can really hear, like, all of our musical influences kind of converging into this recording at once.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TOMORROW NIGHT")
THE BLACK KEYS: (Singing) Tomorrow night, oh yeah, everything's all right.
FENG: This is your third album in three years, and I got to say, each album sounds pretty unique from the other. How are you two so prolific? How do you turn out an album once a year, three times in a row?
CARNEY: We've been just working at a clip, I guess, that bands used to work at, back in the, you know, late '60s, early '70s. We've done - I think we've done six albums in the last eight years, and this is our fourteenth album.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LO/HI")
THE BLACK KEYS: Whoo.
CARNEY: You know, we started the band because we had an interest in making records. You know, we've always kind of recorded our stuff on our own. There's always that natural excitement to making something.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LO/HI")
THE BLACK KEYS: (Singing) Out on a limb in the wind of a hurricane.
FENG: I think you guys have the rare honor of making music long enough and being successful at it that this genre you set out to subvert decades ago has come back around to imitate you in some fashion. How does it feel to have your sound be something that's foundational to this genre now instead of maybe being the newer thing on the block?
CARNEY: What drew us into music was our different musicians' aesthetics, different musicians' style, and we've always tried to pay homage to them. And I think it's cool when you can hear other bands maybe doing the same thing, maybe even inspired by us. The whole reason why we make music is because we heard music, and it inspired us, and that's from the very get-go. We used to sit around the studio in my basement and listen to Wu-Tang Clan and just be like, how do they do that? We should try to do something that sounds like that. And I think that that's the whole thing, is that we come to this as fans, you know?
FENG: That's Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney of The Black Keys. Their new album "Peaches!" is out May 1.
CARNEY: Thanks.
AUERBACH: Thanks, guys.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
