The Black Keys

Chulahoma

(Fat Possum)

Record Review by Adam McKibbin

Some people just belong together. The Black Keys have shown their affinity for Junior Kimbrough for a long time; a take on Kimbrough’s “Do the Rump” made it on the duo’s debut, and then they blew the doors off with “Everywhere I Go,” a standout on their breakthrough thickfreakness. Sexy and sinister, the track put a deep ache in the bones.

Fat Possum embraced both Kimbrough and the Keys, and as a parting kiss to their label, Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney have expanded their hero worship into an entire EP. While they are leaving Fat Possum for presumably greener pastures—with a new full-length set for mid-September that could look to blur the line between juke joint and summer festival—hopefully Chulahoma isn’t also a fond farewell to Kimbrough’s catalog. The late bluesman brings out the best in the young bluesmen.

In his liner notes, Auerbach explains that Kimbrough changed his life at first listen, leading him to skip class to play guitar and, eventually, drop out of college altogether. “The bar had been set impossibly high and there was nothing more those professors could help me with,” he writes. “I’d found a new teacher.”

He learned well, mimicking Kimbrough’s odd tuning and knack for making repetition compelling rather than exasperating (which isn’t always the case with “trance blues”). But he took the inspiration and ran with it rather than stood still; these aren’t by-the-numbers cover songs, so anyone coming into Kimbrough’s music initially via The Black Keys may very well be surprised when they come upon the originals. As for Carney, he’s formidable as ever, even if he has a little less to do than on their own full-lengths, but it’s natural that a Kimbrough tribute is going to mostly hinge on Auerbach, the guitarist and vocalist.

There isn’t a misstep among the six selections; the pair that have mostly been burning up the speakers on this end are the pleading “Nobody But You” and the appropriately spacious “My Mind is Ramblin’,” which joins “Everywhere I Go” among the duo’s most vital recordings to date. Kimbrough made music for the trouble-side of midnight, for when you’re stubbing out your last smoke and scanning the room for friendly company. The man, after all, fathered 36 children. Whether Auerbach follows those footsteps from his favorite teacher remains to be seen, but Chulahoma again makes it clear that he’s got a lot of passion to give.