The Black Keys, Dr. Dog
The Vogue
Saturday, Dec. 16

In the surprisingly long line to enter the Black Keys concert at the Vogue this past weekend, two characteristic dialogues took place. One went along the lines of, “What do you mean this isn’t the Black Crowes?” The second was something like, “They sound like the White Stripes; you’ll love ’em.”

Inside the show, there was one overall reaction to the Keys’ unique brand of blues-rock. It was shot full of the same liquid testosterone that flowed through the boys on the stage.

The Black Keys, a two-piece band from Akron, Ohio, has had the bad luck of being called derivative of the White Stripes. Down to the name, the drum and guitar lineup, and a similar affinity for the blues, it’s hard to argue with such accusations. While the White Stripes’ taste for bubblegum melodies and the more flamboyant side of the blues make them ripe for mainstream consumption, the Keys’ version is geared directly at those with an X and Y chromosome.

Guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney looked like extras from Almost Famous when they took the stage, and the pair’s show did nothing to diminish such comparisons. Auerbach played as the guitar-slinging showman, dipping down to crowd level for emotional solos, while Carney’s maniac octopus drumming style was a marvelous show in and of itself. It was thrilling to hear such a huge, Zeppelin-esque sound grinding listeners into the ground from just two musicians.

The Keys delivered their music with undeniable skill and passion but with little to no dynamic shifts in sound. Though Auerbach’s husky vocal delivery was an idiosyncratic approximation of a good blues howl, it lacked clarity, or at least a sense of mystery. It was easy to get lost in the haze of classic rock emotional recall the Keys kicked up. Being transported to such a place was not necessarily a bad thing. To the musically unadventurous, the Keys seemed to be a mind-bending revelation, but the journey ended up ringing a little hollow.