Dark clouds are patrolling the skies looking for the opportunity to pounce. Buckets of poutine are selling for $12 each. The lines for the portapotties are so long, people are joining them in anticipation that they might need to go in the near-to-intermediate future. It can only be a Vancouver outdoor concert.
Aside from the outrageous prices and a distinct lack of bathroom facilities, Burnaby's Deer Lake Park is a natural amphitheatre perfect for an open-air rock and roll show. And even a few gentle sprinkles do nothing to dampen the palpable anticipation rustling through the crowd for the arrival of the latest American rockers to have made the leap from the indie underground to mainstream superstardom.
"We are The Black Keys from Akron, Ohio," smiles singer and guitarist Dan Auerbach moments after he strides on stage with his cohort, drummer Patrick Carney. "Thanks for coming out tonight."
Such modesty is unwarranted. The duo's opening salvos, ‘Hold Me In Your Arms' and ‘Girl Is On My Mind' are both prime examples of the stripped-down sound that's taken them on a ten-year journey from Midwest obscurity to Grammy Awards. It's vintage blues from the Mississippi Delta made palatable for today's indie-rock brigade with modern amplification and frenetically impressive drumming.
The more minimal The Black Keys play it, the better they are. ‘I Got Mine' and ‘Sinister Kid' highlight Auerbach's talent for prying multiple riffs and tones from his guitar while Carney crashes around him. Its simplicity is its strength; its heaviness coming as much from the blues at its source as the distortion pedals' settings.
In fact, the middle of their set, when the pair are joined by a bassist and keyboard player for half a dozen tracks that the flame that links them to the past begins to flicker. Recreating the tones of the British blues boom of the 1960s sounds distinctly dated. When it's just Auerbach and Carney channelling the spirit of Son House and Robert Johnson, it's timeless.
Perhaps this reverence towards the music of the past is The Black Keys' undoing. It's only on ‘Your Touch', the last song of the night, that the crowd stops grooving politely and begins to lose its collective mind. Girls are on shoulders. Crowd surfers emerge from the gloom. Curfew arrives. It's all over too soon.
Reverence isn't a word in the vocabulary of sole support band Cage The Elephant. Where The Black Keys' musicianship borders on the virtuoso, the five members of Cage The Elephant go for energy over accuracy.
Lead singer Matt Shultz wouldn't last a minute on American Idol. Clearly wasted from the moment he steps on stage, he barely hits a right note through the entire set. Thankfully, this is a rock and roll show, and that matters not one iota. A natural born frontman, even when he's careering across the stage like a drunken buffoon, he's still magnetic.
Shultz's stage dive midway through ‘In One Ear' sparks the early evening crowd into life. Two songs later, a blast through the ultra-abrasive ‘Tiny Little Robots' prompts the first crowd surfers of the night.
As their short but sweet set draws to a close, Shultz contemplates the pros and cons of performing the band's final song from atop the crowd.
"If I get knocked out, you'll still crowd surf my body to the front, ok?"
The song is ‘Shake Me Down' and it turns out there's no room for Shultz among the multiple crowd surfers that beat him to it.
Too messy for The Black Keys' retro revival crowd, too old-fashioned for the hipster generation, Cage The Elephant seem doomed to be indie rock bridesmaids, not brides.
They are, of course, fabulous.
