The Black Keys - Delta Kream (Vinyl 2LP)

This one grooves rather than builds. Hill country blues runs on repetition instead of chord changes, and Delta Kream leans all the way into that: a single riff, a single pocket, held long enough to turn hypnotic. Nothing is tidied up. You hear the room, the amps and the fingers on the strings.

It is the Black Keys' tenth studio album, released on 14 May 2021 through Easy Eye Sound and Nonesuch, and it is entirely covers. Eleven blues songs rooted in the Mississippi hill country, seven of them written by Junior Kimbrough and R.L. Burnside, alongside readings of material by John Lee Hooker, Fred McDowell, Ranie Burnette and Big Joe Williams. Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney cut it at Auerbach's Easy Eye Sound studio in Nashville in December 2019, joined by Kenny Brown on electric guitar and Eric Deaton on electric bass, two players who spent years inside Burnside's and Kimbrough's own bands. Auerbach and Carney produced, Tchad Blake mixed, and the cover photograph is by William Eggleston. "Crawling Kingsnake" went out as the lead single.

The result sits closer to a documented session than a constructed album. Songs start mid-thought, stretch out, and end when they end. Warm, smoky and low-slung, best played loud enough that the low end starts moving furniture.