The Black Keys are back with their tenth album “Delta Kream”, their first album in two years. It was recorded “in about 10 hours” over two afternoons at Dan Auerbach‘s(the lead singer-writer-guitarist) Easy Eye Sound studio in Nashville, at the end of the Let’s Rock tour with little planning and no advance rehearsals. They decided instead of coming out with new original material or even just taking a break from their last album/tour, they would do a whole album of hill country blue songs.
Auerbach said: “We made this record to honor the Mississippi Hill Country blues tradition that influenced us starting out. These songs are still as important to us today as they were the first day Pat and I started playing together and picked up our instruments.” They teamed up with guitarist Kenny Brown (of RL Burnside’s band) and bassist Eric Deaton (of Junior Kimbrough’s band). Every song is a cover from Burnside, Kimbrough, Rain Burnette, Big Joe Williams, Mississippi Fred McDowell, and John Lee Hooker.
It does rock out and they cover the blues very well but they are from Akron, Ohio so this isn’t even an homage to their state/city, it is the deep south of Mississippi they are honoring. They have been a good alternative rock/indie rock band for years as Auerbach is an amazing rock singer, song writer, guitarist, and multi-instrumentalist and Patrick Carney is a great drummer which is why their albums have been so good. The issue is no one asked for a cover album or at least a cover album of the blues most people never heard of. They are at their best when they are doing original songs like “Gold on the Ceiling”, “Howlin for you”, “Little Black Submarines”, and “Fever” to name some.
There was only one song that stood out of the covers they did which was “Stay all night” by Junior Kimbrough, which means only one out of eleven was really good. The Black Keys should have kept the “Kream” inside the Delta and never brought it out for the masses.