The Best Songs of the 2000s: #107

#107: "Your Touch" (2006) - The Black Keys


From one guitar+drums duo of rocking blues to another, I give you (for the second time), Akron's finest,* The Black Keys, with Dan Auerbach on guitar and Patrick Carney on drums and behind the production mixing board. Perhaps moreso than any other band this decade, the Black Keys have benefitted from selling out. This duo has never had a hit record, but they're ubiquitous; more people have probably heard their songs than have heard the White Stripes (even though the White Stripes are headliners and the Keys are always someone's opening act) thanks to savvy Madison Avenue ad agents and TV show soundtrack compilers who know a thing-or-two more about great pop records than do any of those Clear-Channel executives who are ruining radio with their oligarchic rule. The Keys' songs are everywhere, from commercials to mainstream television to pay-cable shows to film soundtracks to video games. Why?
Like the White Stripes, the Black Keys have a primal thrust in the beats and riffs of their songs, and thus their music can appeal to a wide audience. Their song dynamics are catchy, as they often start and stop on a dime, pausing for a vocal effect or a drum roll or a pick slide. They keep it simple and basic, with no extravagence (which is where they differ from the White Stripes) to interfere amid messenger, message, and audience. In that straightforward approach--in musical and lyrical style and form--their music harkens back to the blues of Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf (as well as contemporary--and late--blues musician Junior Kimbrough, of whom the Keys owe a tremendous musical debt). Auerbach and Carney like rock and metal too, so Auerbach distorts his guitar so much that it sounds like it could have been played forty years ago by Dave Davies or Pete Townshend, and Carney splashes and crashes on the cymbals like early John Bonham.
Unlike the Kinks or the Who or Led Zeppelin, the Black Keys don't veer from their original path.** Carney adds a little echo to Auerbach's urgent yet controlled vocals, but otherwise it's a contemporary sound the Keys have, yet the energy and emotion are raw and open. Their music may harken back to bands from forty or fifty years past,*** yet the Black Keys aren't a retro band; there's not a false note on any of their records. These primal emotions--and this song, "Your Touch," is a great example--will never go out of style.
"Your Touch" is basically a song about desire, immediate desire, immediate physical--sexual--desire, and the Keys don't, uh, beat around the bush. Over and over, Auerbach moans, "I nee-eed...your touch," the drums and the guitar the only things holding him (ever so slightly) in check all the while replicating his will, his drive, his urge. It's a record almost anyone can connect with on a visceral level, and it's a visceral song, upfront and in our faces, so basic, so simple, the need to connect.