Be still my beating heart: The Black Keys have a new album coming out on December 6th.
Inexplicably, I was lukewarm on last year’s Brothers when it came out.1 It took me a few months to realize just how wrong I had been, by which point everyone I pestered about the album had just kind of moved on to something else, robbing me of my chance to engage other music lovers in the right-on-brother-ain’t-THAT-the-truth of “Next Girl“2 or the sleazy stripper shuffle of “Howlin’ For You.”3
So how did Las Teclas de Negro 4 announce their new album? With that ridiculous video up there of Bob Odenkirk selling a used van.
Which leads us nicely to the actual cover art.
Clearly, the Keys are way funnier than their music indicates. That said, I thought Brothers had a pretty funny cover, too, which is why I think they probably should have gone with something like this:
On second thought, their idea is way better.
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In my defense, I still think 2008′s Attack & Release is a better album. ↩
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There is nothing inherently funny about The Black Keys. They write bluesy rock and they cover a lot of familiar territory within the genre, lyrically speaking; heartbreak, lying, cheating, desire and repentance. That said, the video for “Next Girl” is possibly one of the funniest things I’ve seen all year. It features a Tyrannosaurus puppet as a lip syncing Casanova, wandering around a hipstamatastic poolside setting, cast full of bikini clad babes vying for the adorable dinosaur’s attention. When a tattooed beauty licks the lascivious lizard’s long snout, it sets off a cat fight that would normally mark the inevitably awkward moment in a story driven porn when the acting bits transition into the sex bits. While this Southern California homage to Caligula takes place, a crawl at the bottom of the screen details the battle between the band and the label over creative control of the video, admitting that “The Black Keys hate this video and don’t find it funny at all” and “they disavow any responsibility for it and with you would stop watching.” ↩
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Another transcendently great video, this time using the tune as the trailer music for a grindhouse flick about a sexy assassin named Alexa Wolff hell bent on exacting revenge on the man who killed her father. There’s too much awesome here to speak of, but a couple of favoritelines include “bad guys beware: she’ll bang ya, but then… she’ll hang ya” and “I once choked a chupacabra to death for not saying grace.” Honestly, it’s a minor tragedy that this isn’t actually being made into a film. Can we get a Kickstarter project going to raise the funds for this or something? ↩
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You didn’t watch the “Howlin’ For You” video, did you? ↩
