The Black Keys, St. Vincent got loud at the Sprint Center last night
The Black Keys with St. Vincent
Sprint Center, Kansas City
Sunday, December 31
For more photos from last night, go here.
What I wouldn’t give to go back to about 2006, when the Black Keys had just released Love Potion and were still getting booked at mid-sized theaters. Or even in 2010, when their breakthrough album, Brothers, came out. I can imagine the kind of show the Akron, Ohio, power couple delivered back then. It would have been the same bombastic, bone-rattling blues rock that they gave last night at the Sprint Center – except it would have been infinitely more satisfying.
The Black Keys – touring in support of May’s Turn Blue – were not disappointing. Over the course of an hour and 45 minutes, Dan Auerbach’s searing guitar riffs and Patrick Carney’s muscled drums washed over the crowd at the Sprint in continuous waves. At this point in their career – with 12 years and eight albums behind them – the Black Keys know what they’re good at. They don’t really need to learn new tricks: The old ones work just fine.
The band opened with “Dead and Gone,” off 2011’s El Camino, a thrusting, blustery track that effectively set the tone for the evening. The first few songs saw Auerbach and Carney spotlighted on the massive stage, keyboardist John Wood and bassist Richard Swift behind them, with a curtain and very little in the way of effects. It was an approach that seemed to say to the crowd: Hey, we’re just two dudes from Ohio. Despite this insane stage and the thousands of you watching right now, we’re not superstars.
Of course, such a setup would have been pretty insufficient if it had lasted all night (especially for the concertgoers seated farthest from the stage). Auerbach and Carney undoubtedly knew that, and just before “Same Old Thing,” the curtain came up for a lighting blitz and at least half a dozen more screens appeared.
The rest of the show would find those lights pulsing and shuttering, the screens displaying distorted, psychedelic close-ups of Carney bashing at his kit and Auerbach destroying his strings. What I can say for the effects: They were expensive, but really only a marginal improvement, and not particularly engaging.
But it was the music that was supposed to carry the night anyway, not a light show or some video feed, and the Keys certainly accomplished that. Auerbach didn’t have much to say to the audience – he’s never been particularly verbose in concerts, and his lyrics don’t really inspire much, either – but he is godly with a guitar in his hands. “Gold on the Ceiling” landed like a falling boulder, dangerous and exciting, Auerbach’s fast and furious guitar work filling up the stadium. He reeled things in a bit for the deliciously slow burn of “Leavin’ Trunk,” a cut from the band’s debut album, filled with the kind of chords that put some hair on your chest.
Carney, for his part, didn’t utter a single word all night – content instead to let his drums do the talking for him. This was an effective translation: Carney is an entertaining maniac on his kit, the driving force that gives the Keys so much of their power. Neither Carney, with his large glasses and moppy hair, nor Auerbach, in jeans and a short-sleeved Oxford, much look like the kind of rock and roll stars who could deliver such noise, and perhaps that’s part of their charm.
The catalog-spanning setlist was perfect for the Sprint Center’s varied audience: There were plenty in attendance who had doubtless been believers for over a decade, and plenty more who had only recently hopped on the bandwagon (see: young teens and tweens with chaperones).
While the crowd was responsive to Auerbach’s tepid attempts at rallying cries – clapping at the onset of “Money Maker,” happily singing along to “Fever” and “Lonely Boy” – I couldn’t help feeling that a show like this loses much of its luster in a setting like the Sprint. The Black Keys deliver the kind of feed-your-soul blues-rock you want to get close to, you want to live with, and there were moments last night where it was impossible to feel the impact of what that band is capable of.
Leftovers: Opener Annie Clark – stage name St. Vincent – was received well enough, considering her far-left-of-center brand of pop-rock. The audience loved her when she was delivering a weeping guitar line, which she did frequently and with great character; they were less interested in seemingly everything else she was doing. A shame, because her set – with her weird choreography and her dramatic expressions – was far more engaging than what the Black Keys were serving up.
For more photos from last night, go here.
Setlist:
Dead and Gone
Next Girl
Run Right Back
Same Old Thing
Gold on the Ceiling
Strange Times
Nova Baby
Leavin’ Trunk
Too Afraid to Love You
Howlin’ for You
A Girl Like You (Edwyn Collins cover)
Money Maker
Gotta Get Away
She’s Long Gone
Fever
Tighten Up
Your Touch
Lonely Boy
—
Weight of Love
Turn Blue
Little Black Submarines
