After the furious one-two of Brothers in 2010 and El Camino in 2011, the Black Keys reaching a new commercial peak, and an uncharacteristic stretch of two and a half years before Turn Blue, I remember the band’s eighth album feeling disappointing. This must be anecdotal, rooted in conversations I had with people; otherwise, you have the fact that Turn Blue was their first #1 album in the U.S., another wave of very positive reviews, another lap of major festival gigs. But there definitely was something off-putting about it. These guys had learned to wield concise, rapid-fire hooks in recent years, and they followed it up with a hazy, moody foray further into psychedelia and soul? The moodiness, at least, had an explanation. While the band started sessions with the intent to produce a like-minded set of world-conquering singles after El Camino, Auerbach was going through a messy divorce characterized by unsettling allegations from both sides, which, one would imagine, doesn’t make writing another batch of gloriously sleazed-out glam rock riffs all that enticing. As music, it eventually struck me as something I never really expected the Black Keys to craft — that wonderful music critic designation known as “a grower.” Sure, where everything was streamlined and crisp and going right for the jugular on El Camino, Turn Blue was murky and sprawled out in an even more indistinct way than the very-long Brothers. But over time, it’s revealed itself to be a slow burn but worthy candidate for the ranks of the band’s better output.

It’s still best to look to the Black Keys for the simple pleasures, but adding a bit more emotional heft did them some good, too. The seven minute opener “Weight Of Love” offers Auerbach — and the listener — some proper guitar catharsis that burns open the path into the album. Towards “Fever,” the one song that sounds like the loopy cotton-candy colors of the album’s cover; towards “Bullet In The Brain” and its wondrously fried keyboard melody, the sort of thing that sounds like machinery coming undone beneath an atomic sky of some unnatural color; towards “Gotta Get Away,” the sun-still-rises closer that seems to cement these guys as just a straight-up classic rock band, no longer anything revivalist. I’m beginning to feel like an apologist for what I perceive as some kind of vague schlockiness in the Black Keys’ second act or in over-relying on Danger Mouse, but whatever: these guys are still getting better because they have songs now, and psychedelia is starting to look like a better look for them than blues, anyway.