The Black Keys: “Underdogs” No More

“I DON’T VIEW US as underdogs any more,” The Black Keys' Patrick Carney tells MOJO in the new issue of the magazine. “In fact, I view us as more of a target now.” Speaking to MOJO’s Dorian Lynskey about the possible reception for the band’s psychedelic next-level new album, Turn Blue, the always self-critical drummer says, “I think there’s probably people that just want us to f**k it all up. It’s inevitable that you f**k it up somehow. It makes more sense to the universe if we f**k up, d’you know what I mean?”

In a startlingly honest and confessional feature Carney and Dan Auerbach describe their eighth full-length album – recorded with co-producer Brian "Danger Mouse" Burton at L.A.’s Sunset Sound Studio, The Key Club in Michigan and Dan Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound studio in Nashville – as “f**king heavy and dark” a sonic middle finger to their competitors and detractors.

Over the course of an expansive eleven page feature the duo open up about how much their lives have changed since the multi-platinum success of 2011’s El Camino, how this has caused them as much anxiety as pleasure, and how their world of success could disappear at any time.

The two also get up close and personal about their memories of Lou Reed, troubles with their Nashville neighbours, their feud with Jack White and the pain caused by Auerbach’s divorce from Stephanie Gonis, with Carney admitting that “this last year was the hardest year of [Dan’s] life.”

It’s just one of the great things in the new issue of MOJO magazine, on sale in the UK on Tuesday, April 29.

Look out for: poignant Pixies on life without Kim Deal; Jeff Beck tells how he would have punched Keith Richards in the face; Linda Ronstadt on pigs and Parkinson’s; Chrissie Hynde wants to be alone. Plus! Oasis, Johnny Depp, Donald Fagen, Neil Young, Jethro Tull, Cabaret Voltaire, Sun Ra, Little Dragon.

Black Keys photographed for MOJO by Tom Oldham