MUSIC REVIEW: DAN AUERBACH - 'KEEP IT HID'

Solo Album from Black Keys Vocalist Plays The Singer-Songwriter Card With A Flourish

By: Stephen Cedars

February 11, 2009

(Nonesuch Records) It is clear, on Keep it Hid, the first solo album from Black Keys singer and guitarist Dan Auerbach, that Auerbach has affection for traditional American music styles -– particularly but not exclusively those styles intertwined with the blues: R&B, roadhouse and garage rock, soul… It is clear that he enjoys the guitar with a penchant on wide grooves carried by heavy riffs drenched in thick distortions. And it is clear he knows what he’s doing with the song forms and genres. 

What makes his album unique, though, is that for all its generally well-realized and uniquely stylized excursions into these classic American genres, it plays not just like a solo album but like a singer-songwriter record. The simple lyrics are usually overwhelmed by the record’s sound and can, at times, slip from simple to prosaic. It is not his lyrical content but the singular tone of the record, realized through its consistently stylized vintage production through a talent for and reliance on soulful solo guitar work, and most of all through Auerbach’s smooth, buoyant vocal phrasing on which he carries melodies so well that complicated lyrics are unnecessary. 

Though he worked with a full band for the album (a break from what he calls the “two-man stomp” of his regular gig), he wrote and produced the songs, and played many of the instruments himself. This focus results in an album more than a collection of proficient genre songs, but rather a record of one artist’s personal fascinations (hang-ups?), and even though there is little explicit confession to it, there is the consistent sense that this music brings him somewhere profound and mournful.

Perhaps the most apparent of his fascinations is nostalgia. Maybe that’s just a clever way of saying much of the record relies on a ’70s sound (though his insistence on distorting his voice, a generally effective approach that wears by album’s end, keeps the sound contemporary). 

But it’s not the influences that endow the songs with power -– it’s the man’s voice and his guitar. The opener, “Trouble Weighs a Ton,” is a sparse solo acoustic tune, and his precise rendering of the drudging melody sells it as a universal lonely lament. His talent for precise and soulful vocal phrasing and cadence is best apparent in the fuller numbers, like the soul tune “Whispered Words,” a restrained, lonely soul song. His solo guitar is restrained but exact — always an extension of its singer rather than a diversion. The standout track is “My Last Mistake,” a country rock roadhouse romp — a seemingly effortless high-energy, melancholy jam.

They don’t all play so well or so honestly — while it’s ostensibly his intention, Auerbach doesn’t always succeed in fully immersing himself into the genres he co-opts here (not necessarily a great criticism, though –- works fine on Beggar’s Banquet, right?).  All in all, the album is an accomplished set of well-played songs, distinguished by the palpable spirit and honest affections of its creator.

Dan Auerbach's 'Keep It Hid' is out now on Nonesuch Records.