The Black Keys - Peaches!

‘Peaches!’ originally began with a set of sessions organised by Patrick Carney, intended to take Black Keys bandmate Dan Auerbach’s mind off a difficult period caring for his late father. Without any real intention of release, the duo - joined by trusted collaborators from the Mississippi hill country blues scene - came together to jam, largely unrehearsed, and recorded a selection of covers that Dan had been carefully curating over time.

Recorded fully live in a single room, the production harks back to Patrick’s early ‘medium-fidelity’ approach, first developed while recording in his basement in the early 2000s. The raw, crunchy drums mixed with guitars bleeding into one another lend themselves to the primitive soul of the record, giving the feeling that you could be placed right in the room with them. ‘Peaches!’ taps back into the loose and unpolished performance where the band feel most at home, with deep, heavy grooves driving the likes of ‘Who’s Been Foolin’ You’ and ‘It’s A Dream’, serving as a reminder of the sound that has long shaped their identity.

Further inspired by their regular ‘Record Hang’ dance parties, the album sees the pair seamlessly bring their signature sound to a new set of material too, reworking songs like Willie Griffin’s ‘Where There’s Smoke, There’s Fire’ and Dr. Feelgood’s ‘She Does It Right‘, with the latter turning Wilco Johnson’s proto-punk guitar chops into a juke-joint boogie.

‘Peaches!’ feels like a welcome return home for The Black Keys, a recapturing of sorts of their early energy.