Black Keys frontman’s porn noises
 |
|
Band of brothers … The Arcs is the new outfit fronted by Dan Auerbach from the Black Keys. Picture: Supplied.
Source: Supplied
DAN Auerbach is surprisingly coy about the porny moans on the album from his new band The Arcs.
The Black Keys frontman has used their downtime while drummer Patrick Carney recovers from a serious shoulder injury to record with some other mates.
And there on the song Come & Go are the sort of sensual moans one expects from an adult video or Donna Summer’s Love To Love You Baby.
After some awkward verbal shuffling, he tries the punny route to explain the saucy soundtrack.
“It just felt appropriate, it felt naked without it,” he says. “We could keep going with these all day. Yeah, it was (recorded) all live, on the floor. But there’s no video.”
The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach has made an album with mates as Patrick Carney struggles to fix his shoulder. Picture: Dan Himbrechts
Source: News Corp Australia
It’s a little late for Auerbach to be feeling sheepish about making sexy music with Leon Michels, Richard Swift, Homer Steinweiss, and Nick Movshon, the men who have helped him make records for Lana Del Rey and Dr John as well as assisting the Black Keys.
Their debut album Yours, Dreamily, is out this week and while his vocals and some of the blues-tinged riffs recall his day job, the psychedelic jams, mariachi horns and female backing vocals underline that The Arcs is indeed a different beast.
For many years, Auerbach and his pals have used any spare studio time to jam. When the Black Keys man and Michels trawled through the hard drives earlier this year to see what they had, they unearthed more than 70 songs.
Down time … Auerbach used the Black Keys hiatus to record with mates he has worked with during studio sessions. Picture: Supplied.
Source: Supplied
“It was a little weird because we started writing down the song titles and they kept going and going. I don’t think either of us released we were sitting on six albums worth of material,” he says.
“Seeing how many songs we had was the kick in the butt we needed to get it together.”
Instead of polishing them up, they regrouped and wrote and recorded a whole new album’s worth of material in a couple of weeks.
“These are like my best friends so it was nothing but fun,” he says.
Auerbach sounds like he also relished the challenge of doing something apart from the Black Keys, who have enjoyed global pop success with their past two records, 2011’s El Camino and last year’s Turn Blue, after a decade as alternative darlings.
Dan Auerbach with The Black Keys at Lollapalooza in Chicago’s Grant Park. Picture: AP / Sitthixay Ditthavong
Source: AP
He singles out Michels and Swift as “great musicians” whose technical knowledge dwarfs his own.
“They literally know chords I don’t know,” he says.
The pedigree of the band members also explains how they were able to get Yours, Dreamily, done so quickly.
“We wrote all the songs together. It was a blank slate in the morning and we would get a song or two done by the end of the day,” Auerbach says.
“I think the quicker you record something, the more potent it is. You’re always trying to balance the energy of doing that with trying to be a perfectionist and you can’t have both all the time. But for me, the first or second take is generally the one I go back to.”
Sounds similar … You can recognise Auerbach’s vocals on the Arcs songs. Picture: Supplied.
Source: Supplied
It would have been easy for the equally talented songwriter, musician and producer to call Yours, Dreamily, a solo project but he prefers the band environment.
“It’s just more fun for me to be part of a team, more exciting and more challenging. I write the songs so you are going to hear similarities with (the Black Keys) and I didn’t make a conscious decision to do something different,” Auerbach says.
“It’s still me but it’s me and Leon and the rest of the guys and the girls.”
The “girls” are Mariachi Flor De Toloache, the group the Arcs hired for horns. The bonus was discovering they could also sing backing vocals rather beautifully.
Of course they enjoyed themselves so much they lobbied to become a more permanent fixture in the line-up and will tour with The Arcs in the US later this year.
“We hired a mariachi band, they showed up just be chance,” Auerbach says. “It was everybody’s lucky day, really.
“And that’s how this whole thing has been working simply by keeping ourselves open to stuff like that happening.”
That open policy may not extend to an Australian tour. Bringing such a big band here is expensive and Auerbach is cagey about the chances of shows.
“Why does it have to be about you? Move your country closer to America and I will be there every week,” he jokes.
“I will talk to the Arcs about it and see how they feel about it, but bringing eight musicians there is an expensive plane ride.”
HEAR: Yours, Dreamily, (Nonesuch) released on Friday.
