In the modern landscape of pop music, five years may as well be 50. Thanks to our continuous news cycle and infinite social media feeds, any band that dares take itself off the radio dial and sales charts for a few years runs the risk of sabotaging its relevance.
For Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney, frontmen of garage rock giants the Black Keys, the shift from selling millions of records — and selling out massive shows — toward pursuing smaller solo projects was a choice they had to make.
In February 2018, Auerbach, the Black Keys’ guitarist and lead singer, was touring with a new band, playing small venues to promote his 2017 solo album Waiting on a Song. It was just what the rock doc had ordered for him at the time.
“The last time the Black Keys toured, we were selling out places like the Staples Center,” Auerbach told us last year about his decision to move in a new direction. “And we had 50 people touring with us, so putting all of that on hold was a big decision, but it’s something I needed to do for creativity’s sake. I mean, I’ve learned more in the last year and a half than I had ever before.”
It’s possible Auerbach and Carney might’ve needed some time apart from each other, not to mention a bit of space to stretch their creative wings. The two childhood friends from Akron, Ohio, formed the Black Keys in 2001 and would go on to record eight records in the span of 14 years, with exhaustive tour schedules built around each release. Their hard work and prolific output won them a legitimate indie-underground following. And in 2010, their previous decade’s worth of efforts paid off in a giant way.
With the release of Brothers, the Black Keys rocketed into the mainstream, thanks in large part to the album’s impossibly catchy single “Tighten Up.” Each record that followed — the glam rock-influenced El Camino in 2011 and the psychedelia-tinged Turn Blue in 2014 — found the guys expanding their sonic reach into less gritty, less bluesy sounds. As a result, Auerbach and Carney’s fan base grew. They also raked in awards as well as gold and platinum sales plaques for each new record.
With this year’s fantastic, back-to-loud-rock-basics LP, Let’s Rock, it’s tough to argue that the Black Keys aren’t the biggest American rock success story of the past decade. After landing on top 10 charts around the globe upon its June release, the self-produced album won praise the next month from Pitchfork’s Evan Rytlewski, who remarked, “This is an album by the Black Keys called Let’s Rock. It does.”
The Black Keys represent a throwback to the days when a rock band could grow and develop over time without millions screaming on social media about whether or not the group would survive a few bad reviews or low-selling singles. It’s been a lovely ascension to behold, really. Each album, better than the one before it, led to a bigger tour, and each tour led to more fans in bigger rooms until the band became one of the biggest around, playing the biggest shows imaginable.
Of course, that golden road almost led to ruin before it split into a fork, sending Auerbach and Carney in divergent directions for a while. Read up on your rock history and you’ll see that’s often the case with successful bands. But unlike so many of them, whose fates ended in tragedy, the Black Keys are doing what musical brothers do when it’s time to regroup: They just rock.
With Modest Mouse. Nov. 14 at 7 p.m. at Dickies Arena, 1911 Montgomery St., Fort Worth. $99.50-$515.50. dickiesarena.com.