Unlike the bottom-ranked albums on some other lists of this sort, it’s not that there’s a whole lot wrong with Magic Potion relative to other Black Keys albums. This was their fourth album in as many years, and the last one they recorded just the two of them in a makeshift studio. Simply put: Where that novelty had served earlier records well, by now it was starting to wear thin. There could be something exhilarating about the rawness of the early Black Keys material, but these records could also grow repetitive, and their standing in the band’s catalog overall is basically reliant on how memorable the hooks and riffs are, because otherwise this stuff is all pretty similar. They’d been on a pretty good streak leading up to this, but eventually the vibe had to grow stale, and this is where the band’s early spark began to falter. There’s solid stuff here, like the yearning “You’re The One,” but in the grand scheme of the band’s career you could basically reduce Magic Potion to “Your Touch.” It was time to start mixing things up.