Item: The Black Keys - No Rain, No Flowers
Rating: 3.5

Reviewer: Joe Goggins

Released: 8th August 2025

Label: Easy Eye / Warner

Drama stalked The Black Keys pretty relentlessly in 2024 and, if you kept abreast of it, you’ll have an idea of what they were aiming for with the title of this, their 13th studio album. If there was a silver lining to come out of last year’s annus horribilis, it’s that they were able to cut another record, keeping up a prolific streak that’s seen them put out five LPs in the last seven calendar years.

Perhaps last year’s cancellation of an overly ambitious US arena tour - as well as its subsequent legal fallout - has loosened the duo up somewhat. Their gradual transition from scratchy Ohio blues outfit to bona-fide indie rock anthem-peddlers has been well-documented, but their more recent output had suggested a yearning to go back to their Akron basics: 2021’s ‘Delta Kream’ was a covers record of Hill Country blues, but ‘Let’s Rock’ and ‘Dropout Boogie’ both fostered rough-and-ready riffs, too.

Like last year’s ‘Ohio Players’, ‘No, Rain, No Flowers’ is formally playful, incorporating hip-shaking groove (‘Babygirl’), slick, jazz-inflected nods to breakout album ‘Brothers’ (‘Down to Nothing’), and breezy, hook-led rock (‘Kiss It’; ‘Man on a Mission’). Plus, there’s space for them to embrace their freewheeling of old, especially on the blissed-out ‘A Little Too High’. The rapid rate of return that the band have embraced in recent years has sometimes resulted in less-than-airtight quality control, but at least, on this evidence, they’re having fun.

Tags: Album Reviews, Reviews, Easy Eye, The Black Keys, Warner