Monday marked the Black Keys’ first time playing the United Center after more than a decade of working their way up the touring ladder. Hard to imagine, but at one time they had trouble filling 100-capacity clubs, now they’re drawing 15,000 a night.
A celebration seemed in order. After all, only a handful of new Millennium bands have developed a big enough following to tour arenas. But the duo of Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney were all business. They performed with a head-down Midwestern dispatch that spoke to their modest beginnings in Akron, Ohio.
“Let’s keep it movin’,” Auerbach said several times during the 90-minute concert, as if he were in no mood (or was simply too self-effacing) to bask in the abundant applause. “Lonely Boy,” the band’s latest hit, was knocked out at punk-rock velocity, its T. Rex riff punching through the roof. A thicket of pumping fists answered from the audience.
The fat-free show matched the band’s commercial rise. Their early albums were off-the-cuff tributes to the Keys’ favorite music – groove-based blues and rock flavored with soul – but lately they’ve mastered a tight songcraft, cutting away all the excess in favor of taut melodies and hooks and finally storming the radio charts with singles such as “Tighten Up” and “Howlin’ for You.”
“Run Right Back” coalesced around a slide riff, falsetto vocals and a boogie-van rhythm accented by tambourine. “Dead and Gone” played call-and-response with two wordless phrases that burrowed between the ears like a Black Eyed Peas chant. “Ten Cent Pistol” foregrounded bass and drums in a soul psychodrama.
Auerbach dished out distorted guitar lines with a skip in his step, bouncing on the balls of his feet and shaking his head like a Muppet. His guitar tone was dark and thick, a menacing shudder that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on a Howlin’ Wolf record. Carney loomed over his drums with a beast-of-burden slouch; he removed his glasses and grimaced as he punished the cymbals during “Gold on the Ceiling.”
The duo performed a handful of early songs without their backing musicians, Gus Seyffert and John Wood, who adding keyboards, bass and guitars to the more recent material. But the concert lost none of its momentum. No matter how big the band gets, its formula rests on simple, brawny riffs and rolling, tumbling drums that swing hard. The music has a clear mission: it’s for the body, not the head. Auerbach’s lyrical concerns can be summarized by the title of one song performed Monday: “Girl is on my Mind,” and all the anxiety, lust and heartbreak that implies.
Poets they’re not. They’re a blue-collar band who turned into arena headliners without taking any short cuts. As Monday’s concert demonstrated, they’re not about to start taking anything for granted now. The Black Keys grind on.
greg@gregkot.com
Black Keys set list Monday at the United Center:
1. Howlin' for You
2. Next Girl
3. Run Right Back
4. Same Old Thing
5. Dead and Gone
6. Gold on the Ceiling
7. Thickfreakness
8. Girl is on my Mind
9. I'll be Your Man
10. Your Touch
11. Little Black Submarines
12. Money Maker
13. Strange Times
14. Chop and Change
15. Nova Baby
16. Ten Cent Pistol
17. Tighten Up
18. Lonely Boy
Encore:
19. Everlasting Light
20. She's Long Gone
21. I Got Mine
