Listening to the cool, glassy No Rain, No Flowers, you’d never suspect that the Black Keys are on a mission to rebound from their annus horribilis, the kind of year that gives rock bands nightmares.
It wasn’t supposed to be that way. The Black Keys set up their 2024 to be triumphant, releasing the glitzed-out Ohio Players with plans to tour North American arenas through the summer. They launched the album by saturating SXSW 2024: giving a keynote, holding multiple showcases, and premiering Jeff Dupre’s documentary, This Is a Film About the Black Keys. But then, nothing went right. Ohio Players made a lackluster debut on the Billboard 200—landing at No. 26, it was their weakest showing for a full-length since their 2006 album peaked at No. 95. The band cancelled its arena shows within a month of their announcement, reportedly due to soft ticket sales. And within weeks, they had also fired a management team spearheaded by industry legend (and Eagles manager) Irving Azoff. Drummer Patrick Carney vented on the site formerly known as Twitter: “We got fucked. I’ll let you all know how so it doesn’t happen to you.”
Carney never delved into the details, later telling Rolling Stone, “You got to take it on the chin sometimes to move forward, and that’s kind of what the last year was for us.” In that same interview, guitarist Dan Auerbach explained that the title No Rain, No Flowers derived from “an expression that I’d heard … that seemed to sum up how we envisioned ourselves getting over the situation that we’d just been through.” Carney hammered that point home: “We got a little bit complacent with the business shit because we’ve been so busy with the creative shit,” he said; it was a reminder “to pay attention to both things.”
From a certain angle, No Rain, No Flowers does find the Black Keys shaking off complacency and venturing into new territory, leaving their gnarled blues-punk back in the garage. A key component in that expansion is the band’s decision to invite a host of outside musicians into the studio. They did this on Ohio Players, too, working with like-minded crate diggers including Beck, Dan the Automator, and Noel Gallagher. But the pedigree of the collaborators here is decidedly pop: Daniel Tashian, best known for his work on Kacey Musgraves’ Grammy-winning Golden Hour; veteran songwriter Rick Nowels, who has written with with everyone from Stevie Nicks to Lana Del Rey; and Scott Storch, a hip-hop producer whose commercial heyday is nearly 20 years gone.