The Black Keys ★★★★ Delta Kream NONESUCH. CD/DL/LP

Their early-career blues spark is explosively reignited.

After striking gold with 2010’s gritty Brothers and 2011’s FM-poppy El Camino, The Black Keys rather lost their way: 2014’s Turn Blue was deflated by divorce and pressure; 2019’s

Let’s Rock lacked, amid Dan Auerbach’s solo/production hyperactivity, a vital je-ne-saisquoi. Fortuitous, then, how

Delta Kream “just happened”: Auerbach, busy recording with two Mississippi blues sidemen (RL Burnside’s guitar foil Kenny Brown and Junior Kimbrough’s bassist Eric Deaton), called in drummer Key Pat Carney to rip through tunes that first inspired them in the ’90s. The Ohio duo’s mastery of the unmathematical Hill Country style oozes here from every groove, whether on the blasting Burnside-favoured Coal Black Mattie, or the sexy glide of Junior’s Walk With Me. Their back-to-our-roots arc is hardly new, (cf the Stones’

Blue And Lonesome), but this music is timeless, alive, and about as good as it gets. Andrew Perry