The Black Keys have gone back to their bluesy roots on new album Peaches!, a conscious decision to re-engage with the music that they fell in love with as teenagers.
And as the Akron, Ohio duo - vocalist/guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney - explain in a new interview with The Times, while recording a collection of blues covers is unlikely to thrust them into stadiums, the raw purity of Peaches! serves as a reminder that playing music for its own sake is the perfect antidote to the demands of the "poisonous" industry in which they make a living. If the record sounds like a step back from the slick, arena-tilting garage rock of their best known album, 2011's El Camino, which sold two million copies in the US alone, that's entirely intentional. For the pair are thoroughly done with trying to play the industry game following experiences which could have crushed a lesser band.
In 2024 the band were forced to scrap a scheduled North American arena tour, which forced them to sack their entire road crew, and also led to them parting company with their management, industry veterans Irving Azoff and Steve Moir. Carney subsequently tweeted, "We got fucked. I’ll let you all know how so it doesn’t happen to you. Stay tuned."
