On their recent UK tour, The Black Keys found themselves swept up in the champagne supernova. “We were in Manchester for a couple days right before [Oasis’s] first show there,” says the bold and bespectacled drumming half of the Ohio-via-Nashville garage rock duo, Patrick Carney. “Getting to feel a whole country excited and pumped for a rock band reunion… it was kind of insane. It was amazing.”
“We’ve never really seen anything like it,” chuckles his quieter, more reticent singer-guitarist bandmate Dan Auerbach. But beneath the congratulatory awe, a certain injustice seethes. Recently, Carney missed a local show by his friends Mumford & Sons because news of the gig hadn’t cut through the internet’s blanket big-gig coverage to reach him. “It’s just Oasis,” he says, ensconced today in a sweltering South Carolina. “Everybody in the world knows Oasis was playing Wembley this weekend, but that just takes up so much bandwidth – and rightfully so – on your algorithm.” He considers the plight of the many less-supersonic acts fighting for feed space. “It’s a weird time, man. How are you supposed to get the word out?”
