There’s a good reason listening to The Black Keys’ new album, Ohio Players, is like spending time with a well-curated collection of vintage vinyl singles. Dan Auerbach and Pat Carney spent part of 2023 taking their DJ gig, The Black Keys Record Hang, across North America and Europe, playing 7” vinyl singles in small clubs into the wee hours of the morning.
The discerning taste required to keep the audience engaged proved valuable as the band worked on the songs that would eventually comprise the Nashville-based, Ohio-born band’s 12th studio album. “I think we started to get so picky with the records and we started to do the same when we were in the studio,” Auerbach tells Billboard’s Behind the Setlist podcast. “We didn’t want to make songs that sound like old 45s, but we wanted to have the same spirit.”
The genre- and era-spanning setlists at those Record Hang events, documented by attendees in Spotify playlists, included such earworms as 1967’s “Let It Out (Let It All Hang Out)” by Memphis garage band The Hombres, 1969’s “Love Buzz” by Dutch psychedelic rockers Shocking Blue (it was later covered by Nirvana for its 1989 debut album, Bleach) and 1970’s “Chocolate” by San Antonio funk band Mickey & The Soul Generation.
Gauging the crowd’s reaction to those 45s proved to be valuable market research and helped Auerbach and Carney tighten up their songwriting. From the debut single, the Top Adult Alternative Airplay No. 1 “Beautiful People (Stay High)” or “I Forgot to Be Your Lover,” a cover of the 1968 recording by William Bell, Ohio Players has the efficiency of two-and-a-half minute Motown standards or radio-ready classic rock tracks.
“The way those classic 45s are,” says Carney, “it’s like there’s no wasted space.”
Auerbach and Carney had little room to spare when they wrote “On the Game” with Noel Gallagher (Oasis, Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds) in a studio in London barely big enough for a drum kit and a few people. “We were in a circle in this tiny room,” says Auerbach. “That’s the sound you hear on the record. It was amazing watching Noel go through the process of writing and run through all the chords up and down the neck until he finds the one that he hears in his mind is just right. We were just kind of like sitting patiently, you know, letting him do his thing. It was it was really cool to to watch him go through his process.”
Listen to the entire interview with The Black Keys in the Spotify player embedded below or go to Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeart or Amazon Music.
