sunneversetsonmusic | monthly music blog

ALBUM OF THE DAY

12 MAY 2026

Peaches!

THE BLACK KEYS

Released 1 May 2026

Easy Eye Sound / Warner Records

*****

A confident return to first principles, that proves how familiarity can still feel vital: classic blues-rock built, but on conviction, craft and enduring instinct, without the need for reinvention

Few contemporary rock bands have built longevity from such deliberate consistency as The Black Keys. Since emerging from Akron, Ohio in the early 2000s, Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney have remained fundamentally committed to the stripped-back blues-rock language established on their earliest records: fuzzed guitar, heavy drums, garage-soul grit and deep reverence for the American South’s electric blues lineage. Influences including Junior Kimbrough, R. L. Burnside, Howlin' Wolf and Robert Johnson remain audible across the band's fifteen studio albums, even as Auerbach’s parallel career as a solo artist and producer has refined the duo’s studio polish.

The central question Peaches! raises is one that follows any long-running artist: how much does originality matter when the voice itself remains compelling? In criticism, there is often an assumption that evolution must mean visible stylistic change, that artists should be measured by how far they move from where they began. But some musicians work differently. Their achievement lies not in abandoning form, but in deepening it. The Black Keys have always belonged to this second category.

Peaches! is unmistakably a Black Keys album. Across its tight, riff-driven songs, Auerbach and Carney stay close to the architecture they established a quarter century ago: blues-rooted guitar hooks, muscular drumming, a slightly greasy sense of groove, and arrangements built around tension rather than ornament. Production is cleaner now, more spacious and confident, but the core language remains the same. That is not creative laziness; it is aesthetic commitment. Like the Delta and hill-country blues artists who shaped them, repetition is part of the point, style becomes identity through persistence.

The test, then, is simple: does it still work? The answer is yes, yes, YES!. Except, perhaps, that is surpasses two other of the bands defining late-career releases - 2021's "Delta Kream" Peaches! and last year's "No Rain, No Showers" - this album will not surprise long term followers of the band: like all the band's work, it entertains with total assurance. Auerbach’s producer’s ear keeps everything sharp without sanding off the rough edges that matter. The riffs land, the rhythm section drives, the songs are excellent and the musical choices are inspired - including the choice to cover Ike Turner's, by way of George Thoroughood's, "You Got To Lose": this is the work of an elite band that understands exactly how much they need no more, no less.