In 2014, The Black Keys were on top of the world. Their album from that year, Turn Blue, was their first No. 1 record, and the album’s lead single, “Fever,” topped the Billboard Alternative Songs chart. As a duo, they haven’t released new music since then, but they’ve both been plenty busy doing their own thing. Dan Auerbach dropped an album with The Arcs in 2015 and a solo record in 2017, while Patrick Carney has done a lot of producing and recently announced a new band, Sad Planets.
This flurry of individual activity doesn’t mean The Black Keys are done, though. In fact, they just shared their first new song since the release of Turn Blue: The band just dropped a new single called “Lo/Hi.” The song is a welcomed return to what established the duo as the chart-toppers they are: Catchy, garage-dwelling blues rock with some soul thrown in for good measure.
Back in August, Patrick Carney said of the band’s next album, “We were always planning on making another record. We will do it at some point, because we just burned out a little bit. It was just that we spent just so much time on the road over a five-year period that it started becoming, ‘The next time we make a record, how do we avoid spending two hundred twenty days every year away from our houses?’ As soon as we figure that out, I’m sure we’ll make a record.”
Last March, Auerbach also addressed the duo’s extended break, saying, “We didn’t have to stop. We could still be on the road if we wanted to be on the road. We will get back together at some point. We’ve been friends since we were kids. There’s no reason to stop. We have plenty of music left in us and the cool thing is that I have enough music in me that I can make solo albums as well.”
Listen to “Lo/Hi” above, and revisit our 2018 interview with Dan Auerbach here.
The Black Keys is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music.
