The Black Keys
No Rain, No Flowers
EASY EYE/WARNER
For The Black Keys, 2024 was a total skid, a calamitous pile-up of business and PR fiascos that resulted in them calling off their world tour and acrimoniously parting ways with their long-time manager. It was precisely the kind of shit show from which some pearls of hardscrabble wisdom might be gleaned—or, at the very least, a couple of good blues songs. The album born of this bleak season, No Rain, No Flowers, tips its hand with its very title. Read it as an aphorism about taking the rough with the smooth, about midnight being where the day begins, or whatever your preferred trope for remaining optimistic through times of distress. The album does, indeed, sift through wreckage in search of meaning and growth. Unfortunately, the answers it comes up with are every bit as pat and saccharine as the title suggests.
Start with the music itself. The Akron blues-rock duo opened themselves up to work with a range of outside collaborators here, among them Rick Nowels (a pop songwriter who’s written with Lana Del Rey) and Daniel Tashian (best known for giving Kacey Musgraves’ Golden Hour its alluring, lightly psychedelic glow). Nothing wrong with that in theory, but in practice, these new collaborators take their role of brightening The Black Keys’ outlook a little too literally. The album is bedazzled with strings, keyboards, and lite-disco grooves; all the hallmarks of The Black Keys’ classic albums—from the lumbering riffs of El Camino to the soulful grooves of Brothers—are sanded away, replaced by a respectable, grown-up, soft-rock sheen.
It didn’t have to be this way. Last year, before all their troubles began, The Black Keys put out a terrific album called Ohio Players. It, too, found them welcoming new voices into their creative process, the infusion of fresh ideas galvanizing their signature blend of blues, rock, soul, even some winsomely goofy flirtations with old-school rap. They sounded reinvigorated. On No Rain, No Flowers, they scarcely even sound like The Black Keys, only occasionally mustering the muscle they’re known for. Check the thrash and slash of “Man on a Mission,” the claustrophobic funk of “Babygirl,” the welcome hints of fuzz on the chirpy “The Night Before.”
Where the best Black Keys albums sound focused and driven, this one mostly sticks to the middle of the road. That’s equally true of the lyrics; at his best, Dan Auerbach can wrestle familiar blues phrasing into fresh expressions of loss or lust, but much of the writing here feels workmanlike. “Baby, the damage is done / It won’t be long ’til we’re back in the sun,” he sings on the title track—but the whole album feels too eager to gloss over their recent darkness, arriving too quickly and easily at a neat resolution. Neatness has never been where The Black Keys shine, and it condemns this to being an uncharacteristically staid affair.
