Brothers

In the blues-rock revivalism racket, the Black Keys have consistently been cast as Jan to the White Stripes’ Marcia — disciples of the same two-member garage-boogie grit, only darker, sludgier, more elemental. Six albums in, the Akron, Ohio, duo’s backwoods-Zeppelin shtick remains paramount, but on Brothers, there’s a new kind of shrewdness, too: real songwriting, and real hooks, beneath all that mondo riffage. B+

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