The Black Keys: Thickfreakness [FAT POSSUM]

Why you'll love it

This is Fat Possum's 20th anniversary reissue of the duo's first album for the label. It was their breakthrough, and "Set You Free" turned up in the film School of Rock.

This edition

• 20th anniversary edition
• Original 11-track album

About the album

Most bands spend their record advance on studio time. Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney spent theirs on rent, then cut nearly all of Thickfreakness in a single 14-hour session in Carney's Akron basement in December 2002, on an early-80s Tascam 8-track. The liner notes call it his patented "medium fidelity" technique.

It sounds enormous anyway. The title track crashes in on a fuzzed-up riff, "Hard Row" and "Midnight in Her Eyes" stomp, and "Set You Free" (partly recorded with Jeff Saltzman) is pure garage-rock swagger. The two covers point straight at the source: Richard Berry's "Have Love, Will Travel" and "Everywhere I Go" by north Mississippi bluesman Junior Kimbrough, a Fat Possum hero. Carney's brother Michael shot the cover with every lamp in the house and a tin of Royal Crown pomade found at a Super K-Mart.

The Boston Globe said it was meant to be felt as much as heard, and the duo spent that summer opening for Beck. By the time they got home, the landlord had sold the house with the famous basement, which is one way to make sure a band doesn't get too comfortable.

Also at Kops: more The Black Keys on vinyl · browse Rock

Tracklist

Listen

On Fat Possum (cat# FP80371-1), a reissue of the 2003 album.