After listening to it a couple times...
Much better than El Camino, but that isn't saying much as I hated that album. Turn Blue is much less formulaic and has interesting sound textures, even though a lot of them are very similar to the Broken Bells (whom Danger Mouse is a part of). It's nice to hear Auerbach shred against darker, trippier chord progressions.
But the problem with Turn Blue is that most of the tracks are, well, forgettable. Aside from a couple of tracks (which I will mention later), I just couldn't find a reason to play a lot of the songs a second time. In Time has an awesome slide guitar lick, however the rest of the song is just pretty mediocre... Fever, the obvious "hit" from the album, (that is pretty much a Broken Bells song) is boring until about halfway through, when the chord progression gets memorable and an awesome guitar melody ensues. I felt like this for a lot of songs on the album... a few interesting things here and there, but the songs as wholes aren't memorable.
Here are three words:
Weight Of Love. What a fucking great song. Auerbach's guitar on this song is great, the eery synth is great, the double tracked vocal in certain parts is great, the whole song is just great in general. Extremely impressive start to this album, sadly nothing after this song grabbed me like it did. This is one of the Black Keys' best songs, period.
I also really enjoyed Bullet in the Brain... The time changes were interesting and the heavy guitar is pretty effective. Odd drum production, though. Sounds a bit off, can't quite place it.
So, Weight Of Love and Bullet in the Brain. What do those songs have in common?
Breathe by Pink Floyd. I'm not sure if it was completely unintentional or a homage to them, but whatever. Yeah, a lot of bands use the Em-A chord progression, however the melody in Bullet in the Brain makes me question it. It's probably intentional?
