Dropout Boogie

It has been a weird fucking year when it comes to what I want to listen to. I've felt lost and unfocused. I tend to always be obsessing over some band... some sound... some era, but for most of this year I haven't felt any strong pull towards anything. When I have locked in on something, it tends to be some oddball thing that I wouldn't typically pay much attention to normally... but now, for some reason, I fucking need it.

At the start of this year, I wrote up a post about a record from The Black Keys that I'd picked up. There was a time when I really enjoyed this band, but I hadn't really given them much thought over the past ten years or so. I bought Thickfreakness on a whim... just to add something else to my cart, but it unexpectedly had me dipping back into those old records, and I found that I was really enjoying them. So much so, that I even decided to give their latest album, Dropout Boogie from 2022, a chance. Damn, that shit was fun and as soon as I found there was pink vinyl version of it, I kind of wanted to own it.

I got tired of The Black Keys around 2010. They seemed to be moving away from that stripped down bluesy rock sound and getting a bit more polish, and I wasn't feeling it. I haven't really paid any attention to those albums they have released since Brothers, but checking out Dropout Boogie had me impressed. This is just a good time. I don't expect it will be something that I return to regularly a year or two from now, but as I'm floundering around this year and trying to find something interesting, this record filled that hole.