The Black Keys – Thickfreakness

Long before The Black Keys were huge mega-stars, they were always an outstanding blues-rock duo that was always very awesome. Their second album, Thickfreakness, was where I first started to notice just how massively huge their sound was. And it was on this album that I found out just how great they were because of how they could weave the best emotional stories through gritty, stunningly special rock music. They’re definitely a band to listen to loud on vinyl because it sounds that much better.

On “Hurt Like Mine,” the guitar travels through a grinding bluesy riff that always bites while the words focus the hurt on a guy that’s gotten his heart broken by a girl that just wants to be friends. “How you hurt me, oh how you cause me pain” is what he first asks but she simply doesn’t understand because, well, she doesn’t feel the same. And in the end, since she wants to be friends, he can lay his crying head on her shoulder? Yeah right. I love how it’s almost like what The White Stripes were doing at the same time but with more of a lonely, down-on-his-luck kind of sad blues. I’m still not sure why it took 8 years later for them to ‘take off.’

The album’s got two covers on it and still, it’s “I Cry Alone”’s old vibes that sound the most traditionally blues out of all of them. It’s about crying alone after letting go of a girl that had such a hold on you “so tight, so tight that I [you] could not see.” The guitar’s basic riff is accompanied only by a soft tap and it’s solely Dan Auerbach’s voice as he laments his sad story to the listener. He never says why he had to let her go but that “At night, I cry alone, I weap all night, til the early morn'.” It’s a beautiful way to end the album really, in the most basic sense of blues possible. – Bryan