Was it the moment they won the Grammy? When their song showed up in the trailer for motherfucking Battleship? Maybe you felt it when the ad for their latest album El Camino was broadcast on your cinema screen before The Hunger Games? Or when drummer Patrick Carney admitted he and Dan Auerbach liked making money while calling Sean Parker an asshole. Whenever it was, at some point, you stopped listening to The Black Keys. Or, without even thinking about it, you’re planning on doing it.
When it comes to music, I’m slow to transform. I may not listen to the ear-grinding that occurs on most of our nation’s radio stations, but I reckon my brain’s just too primed for pop music, whatever the flavour. Over the last few years, what seems to have made its way to the forefront of the music scene is dreamy, folky pop. Whether it’s the sardonic humour of local acts like Shortstraw or our beloved Tutus, or last year’s droning lamentations courtesy of Bon Iver and Gotye, there was a definitive shift toward strong lyrical poetry and self-expression. Somewhere in all that there was obvious room for The Black Keys, who specialize in bluesy guitar riffs and Auerbach’s accompanying honest-sounding missives.
We all know how this next part goes. With mainstream success comes almost immediate abandonment from your actual fanbase. It’s not soon till folks will be comparing your latest singles with the dirtiest word in the musical dictionary: pop.
I’ve noticed a definitive shift towards other genres already, so far mostly in the direction of a returning flare for gangsta rap, dubstep and electro so dirty DJs feel the need to add the word “trash” to it. There’s nothing inherently wrong with these genres, but they do fall under a subset of music I like to call “escape music”.
Essentially, escape music provides for a greater, safer distance between the ideas of self-awareness and otherness, often aggressively so. Gangsta rap, for example, plays out power fantasies of doing drive-bys on passing strangers while slapping bitches with enormous pornstar penises and lighting crack with flaming dollar bills I earned when I sold 50gram rocks to the kids in my neighbourhood. Everyone knows it isn’t right, but who can say it doesn’t sound like the dream life of the disenfranchised. And while I’ve jammed to my fair dose of dubstep, man, there’s no denying it’s basically mindless sound effects off the Transformers soundtrack spliced together with the occasional vocal contribution from the commentator from Mortal fucking Kombat. Love it or hate it, this sort of music is inherently designed as an escape tunnel from real feelings, a fallout shelter to hunker down in while the usual lyrical bombs that spark memories go off like a bass drum in the distance.
When you jam to this stuff, there’s an intentional disengagement with the feelings conjured up by, say, Bon Iver’s “Skinny Love” or even something as visceral as The Black Keys’ “Howlin’ For You”. And this seems like more than Generation-Self-Conscious’ usual reaction to trends. In all honesty, it seems more like the thing that terrifies people is themselves, their lives, their feelings. And with the news reminding us that people in Syria are being blown away (and not by the talents of Skrillex), that folks in Greece ain’t got no jobs (and no jobs means no cash, cars ‘n hos), and that Kony is out there somewhere, it’s no wonder we’re either turning up the volume dial or running around the streets naked, jerking off.
So yeah, say cheers to The Black Keys for a bit. I’m sure you’ll hear them, but as little more than a guilty pleasure on the post-tequila dancefloor, shoehorned between a slow jam and a pop number from maybe 30 years ago. Not cos they’re a commercially lucrative brand now, but just for the usual reasons.