bide your time until Brothers

Music lovers everywhere, rejoice! We only have to live a mere four more days without the Black Keys latest, Brothers, it drops on the 18th. The follow up to Attack and Release was recorded in Muscle Shoals Studios, where previously demigods like Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin and the Rolling Stones have stood, breathed and laid down tracks.

After a year riding on a packed boat in the seas of hip-hop with Damon Dash as the captain one can assume and hope the boys learned a lot. If the instruments they used on the record are telling in anyway then they definitely diversified after their time in a collaboration. A late night brain storming in their hotel room produced a Harpsichord. Also used on the record and probably thought up under similar late night fiending, a parlor piano, realistic synth, Hammond organ and a Wurlitzer.

Mixed by Tchad Blake, Brothers also features Nicole Wray, who was a part of Blakroc and formerly a protege of Missy Elliot. Wray contributes her voice to three of the fourteen tracks. Other than that, the album is all Black Keys, only one track wasn't produced by the Ohioans, Danger Mouse, who produced their last alum, Attack and Release, produced Tighten Up. Also, all the songs come from the mind of the Keys, aside from one cover, the Jerry Butler tune, Never Gonna Give up on You.

Although forced patients is never an easy thing, in this case it's all we can do until Tuesday when planets allign and our ears and hearts get what they've been yearning for.

Minnesota Loves Harlem

Tuesday nights are the best night for action. I've been frequenting the bars and back alleys of this town legally for 3 years now and have developed my thesis.

Monday brings out all the great fiends, the ones who really believe and want to take back a day society has tried so hard to tarnish for us. Wednesdays are the midweek mark and as a member of a larger organism it seems almost a requirement by that point to go out and check in with your fellow goodtime seekers. Thursdays are the rise to the inevitable release that is a well spent weekend.

Tuesdays, they are the forgotten child, by most reasonable people, that is why they are the best. It is when the truly wild ones are out, to be out on a tuesday is a statement that you will go out every night (and probably do). There are no ties that could bind you from living your life truthfully, tuesday-nighters live in constant search of adventure. They don't let jobs and better judgement get in their way.

This past Tuesday Harlem tore up the 7th street entry stage along with Voytex and Teenage Moods. The fellows from Austin played a sweat filled set, that along with assistance the $2.75 PBR's, had onlookers in a frenzy. Their nostalgic, bopping, garage rock sound put to rest anyone's reservations about the night, it being a Tuesday, which has a stigma as a night of calm. By the time they broke into "Friendly Ghost" a full on dance riot had erupted in front of the stage.
With all hope of calm out the door the boys pounded through the rest of their set playing tunes from their Matador release, "Hippies" and crowd favorites from their unsigned says of yore. Only a month into the release of their sophomore effort and the fellas were already breaking hearts, mostly when the night came to it's close and those of us with our eyes still closed, intent on maddness and dancing had to adjust to the dim club lights and accept that the next day we'd be working with sore feet and necks , but our hearts content knowing we'd been a part of Harlem's Minnesotan adventure.