watcha listenin to, crispy?

been fairly obsessed with the new solo album by the black keys' dan auerbach. when then keys hit, i associated them with the white stripes, for a variety of reasons. maybe emma brought both albums into the house. the names, of course. but actually something intrinsic: they both took roots music, in the keys' case blues, and did something both pointedly traditional and somehow amazingly fresh with it. i had been waiting for that move for a long time, but i couldn't have foreheard what it would actually sound like. the bands, too, had something similar at the base of their sound: for one thing a big, almost rigid drum track, and also a kind of perfect combination of excellent professional musicianship and a real roughness or at-this-moment performance quality that was very compelling.

auerbach delivers here on all of that and develops it in a whole bunch of ways. the keys were steaming blues rock; this record has that in excellent forms, but also quiet moments, and serious engagements with a number of roots styles, including country, folkie stuff, classic rock, and, especially, soul. auerbach has grown as a singer, and he delivers all these modes beautifully and with great intensity of expression. i actually like the quiet stuff as much as any of it, like the first track, "trouble weighs a ton," which sounds like it was written both in 1925 and in 2025. the lyrics on the whole album are extremely compelling (again in some relation to jack white): both direct and slightly bent, in various traditional modes with something ineluctably now: basic blues and surrealist poetry.

at any rate, a very strong thing.