The boys from Akron are back, and this time, they're offering up an album inspired by our great state and a good time.
Ohio Players, out April 5, is the 12th studio album from drummer Patrick Carney and singer-guitarist Dan Auerbach. The group has already released two new songs from the record, "Beautiful People (Stay High)" and "I Forgot to Be Your Lover," a cover of a soul standard from William Bell. The band has mentioned at least two other songs, "This Is Nowhere" and "Stay in Your Grave."
With retro bowling alley cover art, the album's title nods to the Dayton funk band of the same name. It seems to be no coincidence. In early statements and interviews, Carney and Auerbach have emphasized that this is a record centered around fun.
“We’re working with a lot of people and the vibe of the record is fun,” Patrick Carney told NME last year. “It’s reflective of our DJ nights in a way, it’s a big Saturday night party record. We just had people come through the studio and throw a little bit of special sauce at each song.”
A second theme seems to be collaboration. The bouncy first single, "Beautiful People (Stay High)," was written with Dan the Automater and Beck. The group wrote three songs with Oasis' Noel Gallagher (a recent Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nominee). The forthcoming "Stay in Your Grave" features a contribution from Alice Cooper. And while the band hasn't released an official tracklist, lyric site genius.com lists a contribution from none other than Juicy J, who turned his time with Three Six Mafia into an illustrious solo career.
All of that — combined with ditching their home studio to record at California studios Valentine Recording Studios and Sunset Sounds — added to a new sound and vibe — all filtered through Auerbach and Carney, Carney says.
"Dan makes a lot of records for Easy Eye, and when he does those, he’s always writing and collaborating with the artists," Carney told UnCut. "But the only other person we’d written with [in The Black Keys] was Danger Mouse. So this time we decided to go a little deeper into our Rolodex and call some people we’d been talking about working with for a long time. Beck was the first one, because we’ve known him for two decades, and the timing just worked out perfectly. He happened to be in Nashville so he came by Easy Eye for a couple days and we knocked out a few songs, one of them being the first song on the record, “This Is Nowhere."
Ahead of the album's release, in March, a documentary about the band called This Is a Film About the Black Keys, premieres at South By Southwest. According to press materials, the documentary follows two strangers recording in a basement on their journey to rock 'n' roll superstardom — all while becoming best friends along the way (awww!).
The Black Keys last visited Northeast Ohio with a stop at Blossom in September. Ohio Players will be the band's first studio release since Dropout Boogie in May 2022, though it did release a live album from the famous 2002 debut show at the Beachland Ballroom in honor of its 20th anniversary. As of right now, the band only has two tour dates in 2024: festivals in Chicago
and New York.
“We’d never worked harder to make a record," said Auerbach in the press release. "It’s never taken us this long to make an album. We took our time and did it right.”
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