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For The Black Keys there’s always gold on the ceiling, even if it sometimes feels a little out of reach. In 2024, amid poor ticket sales and a split with management, the Ohio nu blues duo cancelled a US tour and instead made this thirteenth album of their near-quarter century together. And a surprisingly vibrant, bright-side kind of album it is too.
The title, and resonant electro-rock title track, outline the philosophy: got to have dark times to appreciate the light. Or, as Dan Auerbach sings early on: ‘The damage is done, it won’t be long till we’re back in the sun.’ And throughout, this album surfs the ups and downs of life’s tides with the undimmed enthusiasm of men shaking themselves off and racing out to catch the next swell.
Take The Night Before, a song about a hangover so bleak that ‘I’m seeing stars everywhere I go’, yet delivered in the form of effervescent, celebratory groove-rock that seems to be throwing itself headlong into the night to come. Or Down To Nothing, a howl from rock bottom lifted on a luxuriant stretcher of comforting retro organ, hazy acid percussion and classic gospel groove. Or the psych-country A Little Too High, in which Auerbach deeply regrets becoming too contented drifting along in a relationship that has major cracks in the hull yet sounds like 1968’s most euphoric vibe-priest of Aquarius.
No Rain, No Flowers spans the regular stylistic gamut of Black Keys albums – modernist blues, grainy country rock, southern soul groove - but being swaddled in this kind of dreamy 60s psych-soul sound gives it a coherent, uplifting aura, no matter how life-laden the theme.
The loping psych of On Repeat, a paean to the torment of obsession, is as bliss-state as a lovestruck Motown stomp like Babygirl, or Make You Mine with its orchestral shivers and Sam Cooke falsettos.
Some ghost-dimension lust-rock emerges as Auerbach hits the LA night looking for love and mischief on Man On A Mission, but otherwise the album often – in a very good way - feels like listening to a slow montage of grainy footage from Summer Of Soul, Midnight Cowboy and Hair. Particularly when leaning into the philosophical, on the tropical Kiss It, stirring country closer Neon Moon or All My Life, the latter another bedrock of the album’s survivalist mentality: ‘I’ve been playing with the losing hand, doing the best I can,’ Auerbach sings, downcast eyes hidden behind mirrored poolside shades.
After the storm, a new blooming.
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