In the rich history of inflatable rock stage props - or irsp - the Black Keys' at the Powerstation on Saturday night is surely a first. The giant tyre behind them is possibly the first irsp that is modelled on something, well, inflatable.
It's also a proclamation of
the duo's home town of Akron, Ohio, the Midwest city that was the tyre capital of the US before the rubber companies hit the road.
There's just the two of them - guitarist-singer Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney. And as they proved to a sold-out venue, what they might lack for numbers they make up for in sheer swagger. Their 80-minute set was delivered with confounding blues-rock ballsiness.
Carney was a busy octopus on drums punctuating Auerbach's sinuous mid-range guitar riffs, the singer matching his vintage fuzz of his fretwork with vocals shot through with ancient rock grit.
Their latest album Attack and Release - produced with Gorillaz and Gnarls Barkley guy Danger Mouse - might be their most expansive yet, slightly moving away from the guitar and drums approach of its predecessor. But live, that amounted to one song on which Auerbach played electric piano instead - and managing to make it sound like a guitar anyway.
Elsewhere, the set's highlights included the Hendrix invocations on both new track I Got Mine as well as oldie Thickfreakness, and their scorching take on 60s garage rock nugget Have Love Will Travel. So that big tyre prop might just say something else about the Black Keys: Yeah, we're a retread - but a mighty gripping one.
