The economy might be slowing down, but they’re still firing on all cylinders at the Black Keys‘ retro-rock factory. “Time don’t slow/It’s passing you by/No matter how we try,” Dan Auerbach intones on the smooth-rolling title track from No Rain, No Flowers, the band’s 13th album. If anything, Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney have built their success by sidestepping time rather than giving in to it. In their reality, rock remains suspended in arena-packing amber, 1970s radio drive-time vibes are an eternal power source, and two tight bros from Akron, Ohio can still form bands that roll on for decades.
Recently, though, the Keys’ uniquely smooth career trajectory hit a bit of a bump. The tour planned for their last album, 2024’s Ohio Players, got canceled, and Auerbach and Carney split with their management. So, instead of doing a big tour, they hunkered down and made a good album. On Ohio Players, the often hermetic duo brought in collaborators like Beck, Dan the Automator, and Noel Gallagher to add some new flavors to their signature high-definition garage-rock. No Rain, No Flowers is similarly collaborative, with big-name studio practitioners like Lana Del Rey producer Rick Nowels, hip-hop/R&B vet Scott Storch, and Daniel Tashian (who helmed Kacey Musgraves’ landmark Golden Hour) joining the band in their Easy Eye Sound to help craft one of their most precision-tuned LPs yet.
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In the Keys’ utopian past, the top radio station in town plays hard rock next to punk next to blues next to funk and soul and glam, without any racial or social distinctions (or even record sales) gumming up the flow. Songs like “The Night Before” and “Babygirl” are euphoric bubble-funk workouts with clever twists, like the wobbly indie-rock guitar buzz in the former. “Down to Nothing” is a begging, pleading stoner-soul benediction. “Make You Mine” follows a sumptuous groove to a floating-falsetto, Bee Gees-tinged chorus. “Man on a Mission” is a fuzzed-out blues-metal stomp. “Kiss it” is a rough-hewn version of lovelorn soft-rock poetry. They close it out with the Southern-rock sweep of the Skynyrd-steeped boogie rocker “A Little Too High” and the Allman Brothers-loving ballad “Neon Moon.”
Perhaps due to having A-list song-shapers on board, the album is seamlessly smooth and often a poppy far cry from the garage-grind they built their career on, but it’s not without heart. The band’s recent travails (which include some personal challenges for Carney) seem to color their songwriting, adding a bit of emotional ballast for a band whose lyrics often just seem like riffs on fun rock & roll tropes. ““Don’t let yourself get down too long/‘Cause a change is coming soon/You can always find your way back home by the light of the neon moon,” Auerbach offers, perhaps alluding to the way music and the brotherhood of his band have grounded him. Disruptions come and go. The Black Keys’ clockwork competence is a durable wonder.
