<\/p>\n
Patrick Carney and Dan Auerbach return with their 13th album as the Black Keys – Credit: Larry Niehues*<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
The economy might be slowing down, but they\u2019re still firing on all cylinders at the Black Keys\u2019 retro-rock factory. \u201cTime don\u2019t slow\/It\u2019s passing you by\/No matter how we try,\u201d\u00a0Dan Auerbach intones on the smooth-rolling title track from No Rain<\/em><\/em>, No Flowers<\/em>, the band\u2019s 13th album. If anything, Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney have built their success by sidestepping time rather than giving in to it. In their reality, rock remains suspended in arena-packing amber, 1970s radio drive-time vibes are an eternal power source, and two tight bros from Akron, Ohio can still form bands that roll on for decades.<\/p>\n Recently, though, the Keys\u2019 uniquely smooth career trajectory hit a bit of a bump. The tour planned for their last album, 2024\u2019s Ohio Players<\/em>, got canceled<\/a>, and Auerbach and Carney split<\/a> with their management. So, instead of doing a big tour, they hunkered down and made a good album. On Ohio Players<\/em>, the often hermetic duo brought in collaborators like Beck, Dan the Automator, and Noel Gallagher to add some new flavors to their signature high-definition garage-rock.\u00a0No Rain<\/em>, No Flowers<\/em> is similarly collaborative, with big-name studio practitioners like Lana Del Rey producer Rick Nowels, hip-hop\/R&B vet Scott Storch, and Daniel Tashian (who helmed Kacey Musgraves\u2019 landmark Golden Hour<\/em>) joining the band in their Easy Eye Sound to help craft one of their most precision-tuned LPs yet.<\/p>\n More from Rolling Stone<\/strong><\/p>\n In the Keys\u2019 utopian past, the top radio station in town plays hard rock next to punk next to blues next to funk and soul and glam, without any racial or social distinctions (or even record sales) gumming up the flow. Songs like \u201cThe Night Before\u201d and \u201cBabygirl\u201d are euphoric bubble-funk workouts with clever twists, like the wobbly indie-rock guitar buzz in the former. \u201cDown to Nothing\u201d is a begging, pleading stoner-soul benediction. \u201cMake You Mine\u201d follows a sumptuous groove to a floating-falsetto, Bee Gees-tinged chorus. \u201cMan on a Mission\u201d is a fuzzed-out blues-metal stomp. \u201cKiss it\u201d is a rough-hewn version of lovelorn soft-rock poetry. They close it out with the Southern-rock sweep of the Skynyrd-steeped boogie rocker \u201cA Little Too High\u201d and the Allman Brothers-loving ballad \u201cNeon Moon.\u201d<\/p>\n Perhaps due to having A-list song-shapers on board, the album is seamlessly smooth and often a poppy far cry from the garage-grind they built their career on, but it\u2019s not without heart. The band\u2019s recent travails (which include some personal challenges<\/a> for Carney) seem to color their songwriting, adding a bit of emotional ballast for a band whose lyrics often just seem like riffs on fun rock & roll tropes. \u201c\u201cDon\u2019t let yourself get down too long\/\u2018Cause a change is coming soon\/You can always find your way back home by the light of the neon moon,\u201d Auerbach offers, perhaps alluding to the way music and the brotherhood of his band have grounded him. Disruptions come and go. The Black Keys\u2019 clockwork competence is a durable wonder.<\/p>\n Best of Rolling Stone<\/strong><\/p>\n Sign up for RollingStone’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Patrick Carney and Dan Auerbach return with their 13th album as the Black Keys – Credit: Larry Niehues* The economy might be slowing down, but they\u2019re still firing on all cylinders at the Black Keys\u2019 retro-rock factory. \u201cTime don\u2019t slow\/It\u2019s passing you by\/No matter how we try,\u201d\u00a0Dan Auerbach intones on the smooth-rolling title track from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1947334,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[339622,339652,27205,339651,339650,339623,339621,314737],"class_list":["post-1947333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-black-keys","tag-career-trajectory","tag-dan-auerbach","tag-daniel-tashian","tag-no-flowers","tag-ohio-players","tag-patrick-carney","tag-rolling-stone"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/The-Black-Keys-Are-Still-Really-Good-at-Being-the.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1947333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1947333"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1947333\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1947334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1947333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1947333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1947333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}