Review - Dan Auerbach : Keep It Hid

Originally published in Soundcheck Magazine

Dan Auerbach
Keep It Hid
Nonesuch

“Of course, there are a lot of ways you can treat the blues, but it will still be the blues.”

The biggest hurdle a bluesman faces is the temptation to reinvent it. The above quote belongs to Count Basie, who certainly knew a thing or two about the blues in his decorated career. Blues music is stubborn, it is a rock; just as there is only one way to shed a tear, there is one way to play the blues. What does this have to do with Black Keys frontman Dan Auerbach? Well, he understands the archaic nature of blues music, the romantic simplicity of it all. He did with the Black Keys, and he does here, more than ever before, by himself.

Keep It Hid wrings out the blues into a coffee cup and drinks it in. With these 14 songs, Auerbach has created the most basic and emotional music of his career. From an enjoyment standpoint, it doesn’t have the same immediate satisfaction as the aggressive attack of Rubber Factory (2004) or the amusing oddness of Attack & Release (2008), but these songs seem more dear to Auerbach’s heart, and the back-to-basics approach more appropriately suits the ragged cool of his voice.

It starts immediately, as Auerbach sings on the opening track, “Trouble Weighs a Ton”, “Needles and things, done you in / Like the setting sun / Oh, dear brother, trouble weighs a ton”. The song goes on to compliment its drug lament with lost faith, used women, and fractured families. The World: 1, Dan Auerbach: 0.

Later, on “Mean Monsoon”, Auerbach matches blues’ traditionally ponderous logic regarding love to a tee, wondering, “What’s he got that I ain’t got / Besides stability / Can he drive all night and never stop? / Well I guess you’ll have to wait and see”. Beneath the words swells a smokescreen of electric guitar that continues to resonate on this album, ascending to particularly swirling heights during the howling, piercing solo of “I Want Some More” and the surprisingly jovial “My Last Mistake”.

Keep It Hid is an exercise in musical restraint and potent emotion, and it’s a victory in not trying to reinvent the blues. It fades out to the sound of wind chimes, and you can almost imagine an ancient Auerbach, beard a stormy shade of gray, sitting in a lounge chair on the porch with a worn-out banjo in his lap. That he can evoke this sort of ripened realness at the age of 29 is nothing short of remarkable.

– Andy Pareti