Album of the Week: The Arcs, 'Yours, Dreamily'
by Jim McGuinn
September 07, 2015
Given the increase in sonic complexity that has accompanied the evolution of the Black Keys from Akron, Ohio, garage rockers to a Dangermouse-produced arena act, it's tempting to hear Yours Dreamily as nothing less (or more) than a Black Keys' album without Patrick Carney.
While some artists use the "side project" as an excuse to fly far from the nest, with his new band The Arcs, Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys isn't straying from the style that has made him one of the most successful rockers of the past decade. With The Arcs, we get a familiar mix of soulful, bluesy, psychedelic rock similar to the last few Black Keys' albums from the crew that Auerbach has assembled to help him produce records for artists like Dr. John, Ray LaMontagne, and Lana Del Rey.
Despite this being a side project, Auerbach actually does less for the Arcs than he does in the Black Keys (where he often plays everything but the drums), ceding songwriting co-authorship to a band that includes multi-instrumentalist Richard Swift, saxophonist and co-producer Leon Michels, drummer Homer Steinweiss and bassist Nick Movshon. The group informally gathered to create more than 40 songs over years of sporadic sessions, from which the contents of Yours Dreamily were culled and laid onto tape in just two weeks this spring.
With less pressure to make something fit into a career arc (pun alert!), there are deeper forays into both Otis Redding and Curtis Mayfield-influenced soul and Latin pop, with vintage synths and sax vying with overdriven guitars in the forefront of the mix, along with support from members of Mariachi Flor de Toloache, an all-female mariachi band who came to add some musical flavor but stayed to contribute vocals on a couple of songs. Auerbach may have felt more liberated to indulge his musical fantasies than ever, but as with the Keys, this album is chock full of memorable, hooky jams. It's in the backbeat, in the choruses, in the horn stabs — we get the sense that even when Auerbach is freed to do anything he wants, he can't help but write songs that get stuck in your brain (note to Jack White and his on-and-off Auerbach feud: you may have "invented" the 2000s version of what was originally white guys appropriating primitive blues via guitar/drum duos originally based in decaying Midwestern towns but later moving to Nashville, becoming producers and widening your sounds — but Dan writes the hits!).
Auerbach will take The Arcs on the road this fall, scaling back his gigs to theaters, and the intimacy will benefit the sonic vision explored by the band on the album. Yours Dreamily is a little weirder and experimental in places, but it never forgets Auerbach's strengths in The Black Keys as a guitarist, vocalist and songwriter who has created some of the most memorable rock 'n' roll of the 21st century, and that's a good thing.