It’s been a long road back to Manchester for The Black Keys. When they last played the Arena, in December of 2012, they were riding the crest of a wave, with two shrewdly melodic albums in a row having taken them from bluesy obscurity to rock and roll stardom.
Few would have expected, then, that it’d take them over a decade to return. Fate intervened, though.
They were due to play in 2014, in support of Turn Blue, an anaemic album that saw them fall into a familiar trap for bands who make it big. Emboldened by the meteoric rise afforded to them by 2010’s Brothers and 2011’s El Camino, they rushed back into the studio to try to strike while the iron was hot, only to turn out an uninspired attempt to recapture the magic of the records that came before.
