Keeping your personal life out of the workplace is sound advice. But when you’re an international rock star, and your latest album, inspired by an acrimonious divorce, outsells Michael Jackson, private instantly becomes public.
Such was the reality at last night’s Black Keys concert at Vancouver’s Pacific Coliseum, where an enjoyable journey through the band’s illustrious back catalogue still had to drive through some rough post-relationship patches on the way.
In Pictures: Moody blues: The Black Keys mezmerize Vancouver
Naturally, for a band born of the blues, a certain degree of "my woman done left me" is always inevitable. When the angst (and anger) is rooted in reality of singer, guitarist and erstwhile front man Dan Auerbach’s divorce, buzzes can easily be killed.
Not that Auerbach wasn’t working hard to get the party started.
“Come on!” he bellowed as he strode to the mic at the show’s start, before launching into the soulful soft rock of “Dead and Gone.” “Vancouver! Let’s go!”
With a crowd hungry for riffs, The Black Keys dished them out, “Same Old Thing” leading straight into “Gold On The Ceiling” and the first album crunch-blues belter “Leavin’ Trunk.”
There’s no rock cliché as hackneyed as claiming to enjoy a successful band’s earlier, pre-stardom stuff. But that’s the reality with The Black Keys; new album Danny Downer jams like misanthropic mock-CCR “Gotta Get Away” and the lukewarm “Fever” thankfully blown from the short-term memory by old favourites “Tighten Up,” “Your Touch” and “Lonely Boy.”
Despite the Number One albums, Grammys and arena tours, The Black Keys still don’t entirely convince as a band built for the big stage. Their music, openly inspired by the distant past, is designed to be seen and heard up close and personal, preferably with sweat dripping off the walls. Drummer Patrick Carney, sitting at the front of the stage, whacks away admirably. Auerbach is unquestionably a great singer and guitarist, but he’s not the natural show off willing to throw himself into the bold (and potentially ludicrous) gestures mastered by past kings of arena rock.
There is, of course, a difference between emotionally resonant and downright gloomy; a tightrope that Auerbach failed to walk for most of the encore, “Weight of Love” and “Turn Blue” putting much of the Coliseum back into the seats they’d risen from for the set’s rousing finale, redemption only arriving with a half acoustic, half slamming “Little Black Submarines.”
There’s no denying that The Black Keys have made their mark in rock history. Their emergence from the mean streets of Ohio, the embodiment of the triumph of hard work over hype, has given hope to countless thousands of garage musicians around the planet. But after a strangely subdued night in Vancouver, it’s fascinating to speculate which direction this band will take next.
