The Black Keys, photo by Romeo Okwara

Every Friday, Relix surveys the wealth of new music released over the past seven days and selects standouts for the Relix Staff Picks playlist. Read on for the highlights from this week’s batch, presented by Qobuz: experience the difference with high-quality music streaming and human-curated selections from the platform that puts artists first.

The Black Keys hailed Peaches!, their 14th studio album, as their “most natural record” since their 2002 debut. While Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney have never strayed far from their roots in down-home, earth-shaking garage rock, it’s clear as their latest project lurches to life that they’ve tapped into the foundation of their musical identity. The duo attributes that visceral animation to the same raw expression that charged their earliest recordings.

Peaches! was born from the period following Auerbach’s father’s diagnosis with esophageal cancer, and a rapid decline in his Nashville home that cast a cloud of dread and uncertainty over the artists. Knowing his closest friend and collaborator well, Carney proposed exorcising the experience in the studio, and they cut their new project in a fevered improvisational outburst.

“We weren’t making a record,” Auerbach said. “We were just jamming, like this is for us. Really primal, in a moment when all the nerves were raw, just kinda screaming. We were going through a lot, trying to lift our spirits. I think my dad getting sick made me not give a fuck and just wanna scream for a bit.”

Lit up by an untamable ferocity, the duo crashed back into old habits and recorded their eclectic set of ten rhythm and blues standards and deep cuts– inspired by their obsessive deep-cut vinyl listening sessions – with no isolation and few overdubs. All the musicians piled into the booth and let their sounds boom together in a unified fuzz, which Auerbach and Carney mixed on their own for the first time since 2006’s Magic Potion. “Everything was all cut live in one with no separation, including vocals,” Carney says. “It was a nightmare to mix but we got it sounding raw and filthy.”

“Shitty is pretty,” Dan echoes.

The latest batch of Relix Staff Picks also includes new music from Taj Mahal, Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders, The Lennon Claypool Delirium, Pigeon, BLARF, American Football, Hiss Golden Messenger, The Nth Power, Karl Hector & The Malcouns, and many more gems. Tune in here.