The Black Keys Kick Out Psychedelic Jams on ‘The Colbert Report’
The Black Keys marked the release day of their new LP, Turn Blue, by visiting the master of the awkward interview, Stephen Colbert. The duo sat down for a joint chat on The Colbert Report and faced an onslaught of the host’s hilarious questions before performing two cuts from their eighth studio album, hooky lead single “Fever” (available above) and the moody “Turn Blue.”
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During their talk, Colbert noted it was the band’s fourth appearance on the Report, but somehow the host and musicians still hadn’t established a, well, rapport. First, Colbert asks why the band decided to embrace psychedelia (annunciating the word perfectly) on their new LP, leading outspoken drummer Patrick Carney – who recently shared some less than flattering opinions on Justin Bieber and the new posthumous Michael Jackson LP – to take a jab at the Keys’ harshest critics: “Apparently we made the album wrong, according to Pitchfork.” (Don’t rope us into this, dude: Rolling Stone‘s David Fricke gave the LP four-and-a-half stars in his glowing review.)
Elsewhere, Colbert asks how his prostate influenced the new album (“It brought us into our blue period,” frontman Dan Auerbach cracks), and Carney takes another sarcastic stab at his critics when Colbert brings up Turn Blue‘s lengthier songs: “Our primitive neanderthal minds expanded slightly and contextualized four-to-seven-minute songs this time around,” he says. (“That’s good for DJs because that’s enough time to go take a dump,” Colbert replies.) But the true highlight involves no words: As the conversation comes to a standstill, Colbert calls for a group moment of silence, asking them to “wait for something to arise that we want to talk about.”