BACK IN BLACK

As pack leaders of the post-millennial alt.blues scene - until fame turned their hair grey - The Black Keys have reignited their mojo on twelfth album Ohio Players.

- Henry Yates

Being the biggest band in the world is overrated, reckons Black Keys frontman Dan Auerbach. Being the happiest one is where it’s at, offers drummer Patrick Carney. The Ohio alt.blues duo speak from hard-won experience. Now, a decade down the road from their four-year run of platinum sales, Grammy awards, burnout and premature greying (we’ll get to all that),twelfth album Ohio Players is the sound of rock stars enjoying their jobs again.

“There’s this thing that happens when you become a middle-aged rock’n’roller,” says Carney. “You’re supposed to become this kind of sullen, introspective, depressive person. But Dan and I, we had this kind of ‘aha!’ moment. We realised we needed to go and do some fun shit together, and it’ll come through on the record. Like, let’s do all the things that twenty years from now we’re gonna want to remember. We can do all this bullshit, and no one is gonna suggest it to us.”

Featuring hook-ups with friends and heroes – from Beck to Noel Gallagher – recorded in studios around the world, and with the pair breaking up the sessions by spinning vinyl at raucous DJ parties and hanging out together at ritzy hotels, Ohio Players is a record with joy in the grooves. To check its pulse, try lead single Beautiful People (Stay High), a spring-heeled hit of gritty white-boy soul. Or This Is Nowhere, a driving dirty-funk gem that practically orders you onto the dancefloor.