Black Keys Get Back to Basics on 'Brothers'

For their sixth album, 'Brothers,' the Black Keys -- Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney -- got back to basics and recorded everything themselves. Except, that is, for the grooving soul cut 'Tighten Up,' which coincidentally reteamed the Akron indie blues duo with Brian Burton, aka Danger Mouse, who produced their 2008 LP, 'Attack and Release.'

"Nothing about this album was deliberate," Auerbach tells Spinner about the LP, which is out now. "We recorded in Muscle Shoals for nine days and came back with a bunch of songs and realized we weren't finished. Then we came back to Akron and recorded four songs. We had some time before we had to turn the record in. Brian happened to be in New York City the same time as us and, because we're friends, we just got together for the hell of it, just for fun. And we got 'Tighten Up' out of it. There was no master plan, it just happened."

Working on 'Brothers' also reunited Auerbach and Carney after 2009 saw the pair diverted by side projects: Auerbach released his solo album 'Keep It Hid' and Carney's band Drummer issued 'Feel Good Together' just last September. Two months later, Auerbach and Carney's hip-hop/rock effort 'Blakroc,' featuring a host of rappers -- Mos Def, Raekwon, Ludacris, to name a few -- hit the streets. For a while, it looked like Auerbach and Carney had taken a time out from Black Keys for some creative space.

"Not really," says Auerbach. "I just decided to do my own record, because we had some free time. I had it already started. I thought about putting together a record and looked at what I had and it was already there."

But after so much diverse activity, Auerbach agrees it was time to strip away the add-ons and record alone as the original duo. "That's how we did it in the first place," he says. "It worked then and it still works."