The Black Keys' Turn Blue on LP (and CD)

Ah, this is the way I like to do album reviews. Play it for weeks. Get to know it well. Put the LP on your turntable and then don't take it off for a month. Stick the CD in your car's player and play it until people tell you if they have to listen to it one more time they're going to eject it and throw it out the window. Yeah, I know the Black Keys' new album, Turn Blue, pretty well by now. I've gotten to the point where I know which song is going to come up next. I even know what musical note is coming up next. It's like the summer of 2010, where I listened to nothing but Brothers and Janelle Monae's The Archandroid over and over and over again.

Is the picture clear yet?

Well, let's stop for a moment. Turn Blue isn't my favorite LP of all time. It's not even my favorite Black Keys album. I think they reached their creative peak with Brothers, and perhaps 2008's Attack and Release. Their monster breakthrough 2011 album, El Camino, might have been my favorite album for that year but in retrospect I'm starting to think that's when they lost their edge, sold out, became slick and overproduced and polished, or whatever. Turn Blue is a continuation of that trend, an album that no longer sounds all stripped down, an album from a band with two members playing everything. It sounds like a recording from an established band who now possesses the power to make any album they want to, and this one happens to be dense, ornate psychedelic rock with a little Motown thrown in. If you're saying to yourself, yeah, that sounds like the other albums, you'll need to push the time machine needle forward a few years, where Pink Floyd and the Delfonics intersect--if they intersect at all.

My opinions of this album have evolved with each listen. My first reaction was that it's a great new direction for Dan Auerback and Patrick Carney, a rich and complex soundscape that has far more layers of sound than you expect with a Black Keys album. The opener, "Weight of Love," is the closest thing the Keys have ever come to an epic song--at almost seven minutes it is by far the longest song the duo has ever recorded. It's also an amazing Track One, a calling card of sorts that reeks of ambition and weight and complete mastery of the recording studio. That's partially due to the extraordinary talents of Danger Mouse, who acts as producer and as an "equal songwriting partner" to Auerbach and Carney. He also produced El Camino, which was noteworthy to Keys' fans because of its lush production values--at least in comparison to Brothers, which was an exercise in lo-fi.

(I once visited the Avalon Acoustics factory in Boulder, Colorado and listened to an amazing system in their million dollar room. When asked if I wanted to play something, the only music I had on me was Brothers. Avalon's Neil Patel came in, sat down, and asked me if I broke his system.)

Those opinions, as I said, shifted through the evaluation process. I started thinking that the first two songs, the aforementioned "Weight of Love" and "In Time" were by far the strongest cuts, and that the album sort of blended together and the songs are started to sound the same as the album progressed. It's not as much of a criticism as you think; it reminds me of a review I once read of the Strokes' first album that said, and I paraphrase, "it's the same song over and over, but man, what a great song!" But that specific opinion of Turn Blue, as I said, changed over time. It's not so much that I started fleshing out each song and noticing all the little flourishes and touches that make the music so good and so varied. It's just that the Black Keys, more than any other contemporary band I like, get into your head and stay there and become as natural as taking your next breath.

I've played this album for a number of people and the common reaction has been, "What is this?" "The new Black Keys," I tell them. "It's great!" they reply. It's an immediately likeable album, in a big way, one made by people who know who they are and what their fans expect. But I would like them to get back to basics on the next one.

(One final note: the LP is $25, but it does come with the CD. Score! I compared the sound quality of the two and it sounded like they were sourced from the same digital masters. But as one of my Facebook friends recently posted, does it matter if an LP is sourced from a digital master when the digital master sounds so good? I think he may have a point, so I'm not going to sweat this anymore.)

The ONEDOF Turntable--The New King of the Mountain?

It takes a lot of nerve to introduce a $150,000 turntable to the audio world, even more so when you're a new company with no prior track record. Aleks Bakman, an engineer who "designs and builds airplanes" at his day job, had done exactly that. (Think SME, which got its start in aviation engineering as well.) I've been Facebook friends with Aleks--a kind, thoughtful and enthusiastic man--for a while now, and he made sure I listened to this precious and impressive gem while I was at CES 2012.

At first glance, the ONEDOF turntable (which stands for One Degree of Freedom) doesn't look like a $150,000 turntable. Most of the super 'tables from the likes of Continuum, Clearaudio, Rockport and Goldmund are massive pieces of machinery with integral stands and additional components such as huge power supplies and speed controls. The ONEDOF is a self-contained TT, one that fits neatly on the top of most equipment racks. This is not to dismiss the ONEDOF as small or simple or overpriced--Aleks has informed us that the cost of making the ONEDOF is quite high, and the figure he quoted implies that his margins are not inflated one bit. In addition, the ONEDOF is a beautiful, gleaming machine that contains quite a bit of new technology under those shiny surfaces.

The ONEDOF was placed in a system that was quite impressive, even by CES standards. You know you have a hell of a system when the Wilson speakers you're using (the $68,000 Maxx3) are one of the most affordable components in the chain. Imagine this: over $197,000 worth of LAMM amplification, over $92,000 worth of Kubala-Sosna cabling and over $55,000 worth of HRS equipment stands. Surprisingly, Aleks kept it relatively modest when he chose the arm (a $4900 Graham Phantom II) and cartridge (a $6500 ZYX Omega). I'd be tempted to use a Breuer arm and maybe a Koetsu, but I'm convinced Aleks has tested the ONEDOF with a large variety of arms and cartridges and knows best.

When I came into the room, Aleks was playing none other than "Stairway to Heaven"--at astonishingly low volumes. If I had a single reservation about the sound, it would be that the music was played at too low of a volume, something that Aleks said was under the control of the other people running the room. I kept wanting him to turn it up! But the paltry listening levels underlined the true strength of the system, since I was able to hear amazing levels of detail even at lower volumes.

It's hard for me to say, from my limited exposure to the system, that the ONEDOF was the reason why everything sounded so good. Every time I've heard a system with LAMM amplification, it was absolutely world-class in its ability to preserve musicality. The MAXX3s were so powerful and dynamic that I was surprised to learn they weren't the more massive Alexandrias or X-2s (they all sort of look the same). But when they switched to the digital front end--an impressive looking $25,000 DAC/transport combo from NeoDio, the entire system shrunk a bit and lost some of its presence, warmth and inner detail. The ONEDOF was definitely elevating this system into the stratosphere.

I had promised to visit Aleks before the end of the show and spend more time putting the ONEDOF through its paces, but alas, I was busy running my room and couldn't return. Aleks, who follows this blog, even prodded me to bring my favorite LP of the year (The Black Keys' El Camino) for a listen, but I'm sure that lo-fi masterpiece wouldn't even begin to let the ONEDOF truly shine. He did offer to let me review the ONEDOF, but Colleen and I were hesitant since it just didn't seem fair to evaluate a $150,000 turntable with the $30,000 or so worth of equipment we have on hand. Perhaps I can convince Bartolomeo Nasta to send me his Unison Research Absolute 845 amplifier and his gigantic Malibran speakers for the task.

Aleks hopes to get more coverage of the ONEDOF, so we'll wait and see how the reviewers with the supersystems react to this superb 'table. Do I want the ONEDOF in my listening room? Hell yes. Should I have one? We'll see. But even with my limited exposure to the ONEDOF, I can say it's one of the best-sounding analog rigs I've heard. The ease in which it lets the music flow is utterly rare, and I hope Aleks is able to take more time off from building airplanes to truly explore his talent for designing incredible and beautiful music-making machines.

For more information on the ONEDOF, please check out Alek's website at www.onedof.com. And if you're wondering what "One Degree of Freedom" means, Aleks says:

"The only one degree of freedom that my One Degree Of Freedom bearing leaves to the platter is the rotation about the straight line passing through the center of the Earth (which is my own definition of a vertical axis)."

The Black Keys' El Camino on LP

It was the middle of December, and I was just sitting down and composing my yearly Top 15 list for Perfect Sound Forever. I was trying to decide between Wilco's The Whole Love and Fleet Foxes' Helplessness Blues. Wilco was edging out, mostly because I'm starting to wonder how I feel about the Foxes' musical output as a whole. What was timeless on their debut album was slowly becoming just "novel" after two albums, and I worry that if they don't start evolving by the arrival of their third album, the antiquated phrasing of their folksy lyrics is really going to start getting on my nerves. But just as I was about to slip Tweedy & Co. into the top slot, The Black Keys burst on the end-of-the-year scene with El Camino. It's a game changer, to say the least.

I don't have to remind you of the innate and sublime coolness of the Keys. But here's an excellent example: the album is called El Camino, but the cover photo is of an old Chrysler Town & Country. I heard someone else ask, "Why is it called El Camino then? What's with the mini-van?" That's absolutely right, and that's why they're so friggin' cool. Put an El Camino on the cover and you think oh, they must like El Caminos. Okay. But put an old mini-van on the cover and you think "Why?" Yep. The Black Keys are already in your head. Cool, cool, absofrigginutely cool.

If it hadn't been for the exquisitely ambitious The ArchAndroid last year, the Black Keys' Brothers would have easily been my favorite album of 2010. I spent most of the summer of '10 with one or the other playing in my car CD player--and I spent a lot of last year behind the wheel. Brothers was so surprising in its stripped-down simplicity (it's just a guitar/singer and a drummer, much like the White Stripes) that it was hard to define what made the album so great. The lyrics were straightforward and based squarely in the blues-rock tradition without being encumbered with poetry, finesse and profundity. The songs were about love, sex and bad relationships--usually all three at once. El Camino doesn't expand upon that basic formula, but it does refine it somewhat.

This sounds like a bad thing, but El Camino is Brothers, only polished up and perfected. That doesn't mean the boys have sold out; they've just taken things up a notch. They know what they do well, and now they're more focused and confident about it. The songs on Brothers, while rooted in rock traditions, had such a warped and skewed feel to the production that it made the songs sound like lost '70s rock classics that existed in a spaced-out parallel universe. The songs on El Camino, by comparison, are from this planet. Listening to this album, you'll have that same sense that every single song (there isn't one iota of filler here--every song is equally strong) should have been a hit in 1967, or 1971...or 2011. The songs might not have survived a year like 1986, when the sheer testosterone in pop and rock music had been neutralized in most quarters, but all the cool people would have rediscovered the Keys once the '90s came around. The Black Keys reconstitute the greatness of classic rock, blues, soul, glam and even disco in the same gifted way as modern performers such as Sharon King and the Dap-Tones, or Raphael Saadiq.

If you're wondering if El Camino has a hit that's the equal of last year's "Tighten Up," that's a big affirmative. In fact, every song on the album hits that high. I especially like the opener, "Lonely Boy," which has one of the most catchy choruses I've heard in years: "Oh, oh-oh...I've got a love that keeps me waiting/I'm a lonely boy." Yeah, I know, I have a woman like that in my past as well. She drove me crazy. What a cool, cool song it is. It's in my head, and I can't get it out.

While Brothers was certainly a breakthrough for the duo, the flawlessness of this album results in the kind of glow that suggests universal appeal. Everyone I know who has heard this album is captivated by it almost immediately. I could use a lot of cliches to describe the Album of the Year--"firing on all cylinders"--comes to mind first. Expect El Camino to invade the collective unconscious of serious music lovers in a big way over the coming months.

Oh, and I'll take the time to dissolve the mystery of the album cover--the van in question was the band's touring vehicle in their early days, and they later sold it by jokingly advertising it as an El Camino. Evidently someone thought it was too cool to pass up. You'll feel the same way about the album.

(BTW, I got the LP because it includes the whole CD as well. I love this marketing trend with all my heart, because I can list to the Keys in my car and my home at the same time!)