Auerbach and Carney Commit to the Bit in 'The Black Keys MasterClass'

The Black Keys are back in full force. Let’s Rock, their first album since 2014’s Turn Blue, was released June 28 and immediately went to No. 1 on Billboard’s Top Rock Albums chart and No. 4 on the Billboard 200. 

Patrick Carney and Dan Auerbach have been doing their best to showcase their sense of humor. In the pre-release music video for “Go,” they take on the impression that familiarity — being crammed in a van or on a bus together for more than a decade — bred contempt to the point that they couldn’t talk to each other.

In the above piece, released Monday by Funny or Die, they lean into the idea that they’re so good at being self-important bozos that they can teach a masterclass in it. It’s a solid bit to which they both commit.

“It means a lot to be a drummer,” says Carney. “One of the things it means is that you’re not a good guitar player. Or not as good as someone else that you know, who’s in your band.”

“We wrote Let’s Rock to prove to the world that we’re better people than everybody else,” says Auerbach. “Not just musically — all-around better people.”

Check it out above, and visit your favorite record store or the Keys’ website to get your hands on a copy of Let’s Rock. You can also catch them in person when their double-headliner tour with Modest Mouse stops at Bridgestone Arena on Oct. 1, with support from *repeat repeat, whose Glazed was produced by Carney. Tickets run from $22 all the way to $495 and are available here. (Seats in the lower bowl are around $115.)

There’s one not-so-funny thing about Let’s Rock that’s also worth talking about. It isn’t imperative for every artist to make statements on issues, but the Keys have touched on a very serious and intense political matter. The title of Let’s Rock was inspired by the last words of Edmund Zagorski, who in November was the first prisoner executed by electric chair in the state since 2007. Two other men, Billy Ray Irick and David Earl Miller, were executed by the state in 2018. Don Johnson was executed in May, the first of four planned executions this year. As my colleague Steven Hale has pointed out, state executions are complicated issues with a lot of facets worthy of discussion: “I saw Tennessee’s death penalty in practice last night,” Hale wrote following Irick’s execution, “and watched as state officials killed a man in my name and in yours.” 

Auerbach and Carney are both accomplished musicians and producers who chose to make their home here. But they’ve yet to say much beyond that Zagorski’s death caught their attention. Kim Kardashian and Rihanna — two celebrities who’ve been here at most for a day or two — shared Cyntoia Brown’s story, which gave a notable boost to advocacy and activism efforts on her behalf. You can’t say that that those efforts directly caused former Gov. Haslam to grant Brown clemency, but it certainly didn’t hurt. And it wasn’t a choice that alienated fans of either celebrity. I’d like to see the Keys use the large platform they’ve earned in a similar way — especially regarding something that they clearly think is worth knowing about.