I think my tastes are beginning to become more and more boring as the years go on.

With that said, I'm quite liking The Black Keys and their latest record.



As in, I'm liking the band that has sold probably close to 500,000 copies of that same record, whose songs have appeared in every f-ing commercial and sports highlight package creating since the time the record came out. Which, you know... for rock bands, those spaces are usually reserved for guys who have been out for decades... like the Foo Fighters or the Red Hot Chili Peppers. (So at least I'm hearing a decent rock band in their relative prime as I'm watching linebackers run over quarterbacks.)

The band's been around for awhile, but they mostly stuck to a bluesier sound, which kept me mostly away because I find blues kind of boring and didn't hear anything unique to make me want to listen to them. But then last year's album "Brothers" came out and changed the blues formula to include a lot more soul. And it was seriously good. And it was also relentlessly played everywhere (or at least "Tighten Up and "Howlin' For You"), so I'd be tempted to chalk my admiration of the record to constant airplay breeding familiarity. And since it wasn't half-bad, it ended up growing on me. Which isn't true, cause I remember thinking "Tighten Up" was pretty damn good rock song at first listen, which was also the case for non-singles like "Everlasting Light" and "The Only One".

With their latest record "El Camino," though... I'm not so certain that it isn't familiarity winning the album over for me. It's definitely more overtly pop than probably anything else they've released, and I'm not as fond of it as say "Brothers" (though it does fix its main sin of being extremely long), but it's still decent.

But I think I'm liking it more because it's replacing all the usual rock artists that the commercials play for their crappy movies/TV shows/products. I've had SportsCenter on in the background a lot where I'm working (for lack of anything better to put on), and for the past who knows how long, just about every track from the album was played as bumper music for a package pimping what's coming up next. And I mean, this doesn't seem like it should make me more liable to like the album, but this all hinges on the fact that I find the album to be pretty decent and not at all over-produced, and that I'm accustomed to hearing bands like the aforementioned Foo Fighters and Red Hot Chili Peppers (and bands like Coldplay as well) as the music preferred by huge media conglomerates. And even if it's not GREAT music, it's getting airplay that only major label bands are usually afforded. (And I know they're on a label that's owned by Warner, but--it seems as if their success seemed much more organic than others', so it doesn't seem as if they're on a major label... )

In any case, my favorite is the above song I posted. It's been getting a lot of comparisons to Led Zeppelin's "Stairway To Heaven" (which, side note, apparently my brother hadn't heard before recently when it played on a radio--which, even though I don't really like the band, seems like a large oversight to go 17 years without hearing it) in that it starts off all folksy but then a balls out guitar riff comes to save the day... but it's a lot less pretentious than "Stairway To Heaven." Not necessarily saying it's *better* than the Led Zep classic, since I'm sure that would be a dangerous opinion to have in certain circles, but still.