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.

Thickfreakness

The early part of the 2000's were a weird time for me musically. I'd kind of lost touch with the more underground side of hardcore, and was actively looking for different things to listen to. I was all over the place and spending a lot of time with bands like Slipknot, Linkin Park and Limp Bizkit... plus I was checking out a lot of hip hop as well as some blusey garage rock stuff like The White Stripes and The Black Keys. Strange days indeed. By the time we were hitting 2004/2005, I ended up shaking off most of that stuff and diving back into straight ahead hardcore again. Still, every once in a while, when I'm feeling a bit bored with everything and need something different, I'll dip back into what I was listening to during those weird years to shake things up.

When I was recently picking up the reissue of Seaweed's Actions And Indications, I noticed that the store also had a pink vinyl copy of Thickfreakness from The Black Keys. I hadn't really bothered with this band for well over ten years, but seeing this album in the store gave me the sudden urge to revisit them. Sure, I could have probably just queued them up on Spotify, but instead I decided to spend money on the vinyl. Makes perfect sense, right?

While this is listed as "pink vinyl" as a part of some campaign with other bands to raise money for cancer charities, I don't think they did a great job getting the color right. I mean, it matches the red from the cover perfectly, but as far as "pink" goes... not quite.