The Black Keys: Noel Gallagher turns up for a thrilling clash of the indie rock titans
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The Black Keys were joined onstage by Noel Gallagher, no less, for the encore at the first of three sold-out shows at the newly reopened Brixton Academy. This Anglo-American clash of the indie-rock titans came about because Gallagher Sr has co-written three songs on the bluesy duo from Akron, Ohio’s latest album, Ohio Players.
In a deferentially respectful appearance, Noel sauntered on amid little fanfare to fist-pump with singer-guitarist Dan Auerbach, and then just strum, harmonise and sing “oo-oo” and “hey” on two songs, Only Love Matters and On The Game.The latter song’s singalong chorus of “everybody’s on the game” was written by Auerbach, who was unaware of how that assertion might by construed on this side of the Atlantic. However, there was nothing lost in translation between the two parties when they recorded together in Hackney’s low-rent Toe Rag studios – after all, they drolly kept that lyric in place, and Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney reverentially dubbed their guest “the Chord Lord”, thanks to his abilities as a songwriterly strummer.
Onstage at Brixton, the Oasis and High Flying Birds star’s presence capped off a buzzy performance comeback from the Black Keys. Those two co-compositions, plus another aired earlier without Gallagher’s aid, Beautiful People (Stay High) – all enthusiastically received by an enviably rowdy crowd for early midweek – mark Auerbach and Carney’s return to the poppy accessibility of their commercial peak in the early 2010s.
Throughout the previous decade, the Black Keys slogged to the top via every low-rent venue on earth, and finally hit the jackpot with 2010’s fuzzy and funky Brothers and the following year’s finely honed El Camino. Second in Tuesday’s set, their beefed-up six-piece live combo aired one of the latter album’s 24-carat bangers, Gold on the Ceiling, and soon after came Tighten Up off Brothers, the audience’s jubilant rendering of its instrumental chorus melody bordering on, well, Oasis gig-esque.
Success, back then, came at a price: the band seemingly hated fame, and, for a while there, each other. Auerbach channelled all his love into his studio in Nashville, Easy Eye Sound; the Keys’ latter-day self-penned outings rather felt like they’d rattled off Auerbach’s production line, and tellingly only warranted a song apiece at the Academy. Instead, there was This Is Nowhere, one of seven Ohio Players co-writes with another A-lister, Beck Hansen, its “wanna waste my life in the sunshine” refrain breezily epitomising this upbeat moment in the Black Keys’ narrative.
Brixton’s relative intimacy was visibly a more comfortable milieu for Auerbach and Carney, each in tinted glasses, the former in white vest and unbuttoned shirt, as compared with O2 Arena last June. Here, there was scope for musical flourishes, some dazzling bottleneck guitar, and a fabulous tilt at Motown classic I Heard It Through The Grapevine – Auerbach is no Marvin Gaye, but still undervalued for his wonderfully soulful voicing.
So, this was a triumphant night for a band back in ascendancy, with the late cameo from the home-nation megastar as the cherry on the icing, his “oo-oo”’s and “hey”’s a conclusive affirmation: the Black Keys have proved themselves as post-millennial giants.
Also tonight (May 8) and tomorrow (May 9) at Brixton Academy, then next Weds 15 at Manchester Co-op Live; ticketmaster.co.uk
