Ohio Players

by

The Black Keys

To be honest, The Black Keys often leave me feeling conflicted. Typically, I find that the last 5 records (including this one) had some glimpses of brilliance and ripe creativity, but the rest oft fall flat. Ohio Players is the most recent example, where I think the back half carries the front half. Songs like “Paper Crown” remind me of how novel BK can sound, and “Every Time You Leave”, “I Forgot To Be Your Lover” and “Read Em And Weep”’ take us back to previous sounds and experiments and show us they still have the capacity to make some great rock. But many times throughout they made the same attempts and fell short. At the end of the day, it feels like a post-prime band grasping at anything to keep record sales rolling in.