The Black Keys are popular enough to headline arenas now, but core members Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney know that their crunchy blues rock is best appreciated in a too-hot, too-crowded dive bar.
The duo’s latest video, for the single “Little Black Submarines,” attempts to capture that sort of live rawness.
Nashville’s tiny Springwater Supper Club is the setting for the blistering song, with a few dozen onlookers witnessing the performance by one of the best live acts in the current rock landscape.
Watch the video here:
Originally slated to be a video combining live footage with a narrative, the Keys instead opted for a simple, straightforward performance video. For the live portion, a small number of local fans were allowed into the tiny bar, and the scheduled performance of one song eventually grew into an impromptu complete set.
“We all just sort of kind of mutually agreed that it should probably just be the performance and not any of the other extra stuff,” Auerbach told told Rolling Stone. “Luckily we had live footage so we turned it into a live video. We just sort of said ‘You know, it was fun kind of performing here at a small club with the fans. Why don’t we just have it be that?'”
It also gives some screen time to the Black Keys’ expanded live lineup.
What do you think of the video? Grade it at the top of the story.