Lonely Boy

The Black Keys built "Lonely Boy" on a stomp. The groove is so immediate, so blunt in its physical intention, that the song communicates its entire emotional world before a word is sung. Dan Auerbach's guitar riff is deliberately primitive — one note hammered into a rhythm, the blues reduced to its most essential load-bearing element. His voice is warm and slightly worn at the edges, the sound of someone telling you something true that they've told before and are tired of having to repeat. The lyrical situation is classic Delta blues updated to modern urban alienation: a man who wants something he can't hold, whose luck runs sideways while everyone else's runs straight. But the mood is never wallowing — the tempo doesn't allow it. "El Camino" was the Keys at their most streamlined, and this track is the thesis statement: garage rock discipline applied to blues feeling, the soul of something ancient forced through a very fast, very loud machine. It's the kind of song that makes a room move whether the room wants to or not. Play it loud enough and it becomes something closer to a physical experience than a musical one.