Dan Auerbach, known in the music world as the vocalist and guitarist for alternative blues-rock band the Black Keys, released his solo album Feb. 10. The solo album, titled Keep it Hid, follows the same vein as the Black Keys’ low key, blues-inspired, edgy sound but without much of the dark driving force produced by drummer Pat Carney. Keep it Hid features an eclectic variety of sounds while still maintaining Auerbach’s signature low-key alternative sound.
Auerbach opens his solo album with a Deep-South type of folk song, “Trouble Weighs a Ton.” Despite its simplicity of arrangement and lyrics, the song manages to show off both Auerbach’s eclectic abilities and his depth of treatment of tradition and influential musical styles. Its sympathetic lyrics — the repetition of the line “Oh, dear brother, trouble weighs a ton” (inserting “sister” and “mother” throughout the song) — and the subsequent lack of the typical religious connotations of this style make it a universal, understanding song that preludes an album with similar stylistic depth.
The album then immediately jumps into “I Want Some More,” a psychedelic flashback that merges with blues in a swampy, bayou tangle that is almost sexy in its darkness. The opening guitar line is reminiscent of “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite,” from The Beatles’ own more alternative days. As soon as Auerbach starts singing, however, his original voice individualizes the style, merging it with that murky sound to create something entirely unique.
The album represents a fairly clear progression in sound, as each track seems to build on the one before it while tweaking an important underlying theme to individualize each song. “Heartbroken, In Disrepair” pulls the album out of the murk into a clearer, crisper treatise about heartbreak but holds onto the dirty blues of its preceding song. The line is startlingly broken up by the track “Because I Should,” which seems to just be 58 seconds of a sound clip from a scary movie. It continues onward in the form of “Whispered Words (Pretty Lies),” which even further cleans up the sound, adding a slightly creepy, very dramatic pulsing nostalgia to the album’s range of sounds. If it weren’t for the already established eclectic set of sounds that Auerbach has progressed through on the album, “My Last Mistake” would seem woefully out of place. With its upbeat, pop musicality and it’s contradictory but conventional lyrical sentiments, Auerbach weaves together a summer-style pop song that still manages originality with a sound, in its gravelly edge, that pays tribute to the vintage equipment used in recording.
What is odd about Keep it Hid is that while it presents a variety of styles and themes in its music, the variety is able to slip past the listener. There is depth and change and progression, but the unique, specific vocals, guitar style and sound produced by Auerbach’s equipment blends the songs together so that mere surface listening produces one steady stream of background music. The individuality manifests itself in details and finer points that a cursory run-through might miss. It’s entirely up to the listener what he or she wants to make of this album, but if you are looking for an alternative, interesting and unique sound, than Keep it Hid is sure to please.
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