The Black Keys

The Black Keys make good music that you don't have to pay attention to. It would be perfect to have playing on the jukebox in a dark smoke-stained pool hall with a bar. You see that guy on a roll, see him strut circling the table, laconic with a cocky expression and a head-bob in time to the snakey guitar? Damn right that's good music. It doesn't need any explanation, nor criticism. When your music sounds like these guys, criticism is redundant.

It's also very good music to have on alone at home, getting whisky drunk. I myself don't do a whole much of that, but some of you listeners at home who decide to give it a try will bear me out on that I am sure. It's perfect. It has that sound; that evil-down, fuzz-bluesed, thick-and-supple-wristed, one-foot-stomping-on-the-floorboards shouting-for-joy type vibe. Joy, or something that feels enough like it when you're shouting anyhow. It's got that singing hallelujah praises even all the while clutched by the wages of sin. Type vibe. Now I think I'm reading into it a bit much. Muddying the quintessence of its stripped-downedness.

It's the type of music that Steve Buscemi's character from Ghost World would have liked, until he ran it through his encyclopedic brain, realized it wasn't any of his old-school authentic heroes, and concluded that it was really just two dorky-looking white guys from Ohio.

Whether he still would have liked it at that point depends on how high your opinion of his character is.

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