this is shaping up to be quite a year for my fave two member blues band (sorry Meg).
opening up for Radiohead on 6 dates, signing to Nonesuch, which will drop their 4th full length,
Magic Potion on September 12th, along with their blazing last recordings for the seminal blues label studly Possum having just been released as a 6 (well, 7, but the last track is a voice message) song EP titled
Chulahoma - The Songs of Junior Kimbrough, the Black Keys may just blow the fuck up this year, and you can pull out your hipster card by saying you knew them FIRST!
Yes, Chulahoma are covers of the
nearly ignored Mississippi blues genius (sorry 'bout the shitty link, best I could do!), covers that not only do justice to the originals, but also serve as a good barometer to just how seriously these two crackers from Akron take the blues.
Since I get the impression you cats dig the free stuff...
Junior Kimbrough's
All Night Long
JK's
You Better Run
JK's
I Feel Allright
All off of his album
All Night Long, which (and this is no ringing endorsement, but a fun fact) was named best blues album of the decade by Rolling Stone.
Oodles of free stuff at that studly Possum site, check out some of the other bands while you're there...
but wait, MORE FREE STUFF! This time from the band this thread is supposedly about!
Meet Me in the City, one of the Kimbrough covers. Notice the proper respect, yet also subtle tweaking of the original material.
since we're all such whores for freebies (legal freebies, it should be noted) here's some more exemplary recordings from my fave rock band in the world (at this very moment, at any rate).
Hard Row
Set You Free
and another cover (hey, they're a blues band!), this time of the James Murphy namechecked The Sonics,
Have Love Will Travel. If you know the original (and you damn well better should!), notice not only the reverence to, but (sacrilege to say) improvement on the source material.
and since I'm putting off shit I gotta do today...MORE!
!0am Automatic
Here's their Myspunk page for some streaming stuff.
I've caught the Keys three times.
First time, they had just released their debut,
The Big Come Up, and they were opening for the ladies with great taste (seriously, the White Stripes, The Gossip) in opening acts, Sleater-Kinney. Good show, bought a cheap ass $10 tee shirt I still have to this day. You could tell they had much room for improvement, but they were a band I put on my watch list. Plus, they didn't embarass themselves before the onslaugh of rrrriot-girl power that's a Sleater-Kinney live show, which I took to be a sign of good things to come.
Next caught 'em at the Fillmore in SF, and they flat out brought it. The kinks were worked out, and man, they were fuckin' tight. Carney's percussion had improved by leaps and bounds; he was finally able to keep up with the technically superior Auerbach, and the show was a revelation. Not that you asked, but no, I didn't wear the t-shirt I had bought already, 'cuz wearing a tee with the name of the band your going to see is fucking Dumbledore.
Third show was even better than the last...couple of new tracks, couple of covers I haven't heard 'em do before.
Do yourselves a favor and get your ass to one of their shows (not the Radiohead ones...tickets for the show in Berkeley cost upwards of $100...I love Radiohead, but would rather see 6 or 7 less known acts in smaller venues than pay that much for one band). They should be touring to support the new album come September...
Personally, I'm an atheist in the voting booth and a theist in the movie theatre. I separate the morality of religion with the spirituality and solace of it. There is something boring about atheism.