What sign is it that The Black Keys will no longer be able to fill the Ziggo Dome in 2024? The second ring at the back is hidden behind black cloths, and hundreds of places also remain empty on the long sides above. The gigantic International Players Tour lasts until November, with Amsterdam being one of the very first stops. No sell outI don’t think that’s a good feeling. You can secretly blame that on the band itself, which charges prices well over fifty euros for a standing room. There are also few young people to be seen. This is how you automatically become one heritage act.
Photography Marc Prodanovic
But of course it is also May 5, a public holiday. Today you can also attend shows for free throughout the Netherlands. The benefit of the doubt then, especially with the band’s last show here in mind. Then the band really thundered through the set, overwhelming Amsterdam, it was an addictive sight. How different is that now. There is no thundering. In the history of the Ziggo Dome, the turnout must have been one of the most boring since the opening.
The way singer-guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney stroll onto the stage is so excruciatingly ordinary that it almost has to be a statement. And then that beginning. The stage is still bare, there is no light show yet, which will follow later, and the four session musicians standing in a row behind the band stand there as if they have to go to work for the day. While the rest of the world is on the beach: a bit like that idea.
But appearances are deceiving. The false start turns out to be literally just a warm-up. Because the puzzle pieces – show, band, audience – fall together immediately afterwards. After opening with I Got Mine all registers will still be opened. Gold On the Ceiling gives a couple next to me goosebumps. Beforehand there was talk on the train about how many real hits this band actually has. That Gold On The Ceiling I wouldn’t have dared to say that it causes a wave of love in some couples, but they disappear into each other’s arms while singing along.
The Black Keys then get going, no longer like that steamroller from last time, more like a diesel that ultimately never lets you down, no matter how far you want to go on holiday with it. And the two themselves? Dan, wearing sunglasses, asks for rounds of applause for his bandmate Patrick. He is sitting on a raised platform, wearing sunglasses, playing drums, right at the front. He, a tall lanky who quickly falls into melancholy when you sit opposite him, waves again; he doesn’t talk.
A good concert naturally transcends time and place at some point, but that is never a certainty. As a spectator you are the lucky one if that happens. As it goes with bands that play like diesels: at some point everything will be perfectly balanced, not immediately, but when everything is at full steam. It is a block of two that allows the band (with four session musicians) to take off here. Everlasting Lightfrom the plate Brothers, is drawn out for a long time, the band plays with rhythm and tempo, Dan’s vocals become more subtle than we are used to, here is the most indirect left direct you can imagine. That’s hit one.
Immediately afterwards, without pause, follows Next Girl, deployed so boldly that even the cloths on the second ring at the back seem to vibrate. Pats, this is hit two. Boring opening? Not sold out? Someone next to you who films everything but doesn’t watch? A glass of beer for five and a half euros? Suddenly it doesn’t matter anymore. The Black Keys rise, we rise with them. Even that guy who films everything stops filming and gets lost in it. From subtle to overwhelming within a few minutes: this block is so strong that even attackers of the newly crowned champions PSV could not get through it.
Still a real winner, as a spectator, and that will happen again. In the cold, because someone from the Ziggo Dome has decided to turn up the air conditioning, it is freezing in the stands. Weight Of Lovefrom the great heartbreak album Turn Blue, almost forgotten in the entire oeuvre, hits just as hard. Suddenly Dan sings away his demons. He attacks them with guitar solos, which contain a kind of venom that is shocking.
Dan keeps it superficial in his talk: he is happy to be here, ‘applause for the band’, ‘we also played this song when we were in Amsterdam for the first time’, those kinds of texts. But there is much more to him than he is letting on. You would like to linger in that emotion. Now becomes immediate Howlin’ For You deployed. Also about love, but a lot happier.
The room is turned upside down again, it is the third and fourth left-wing directists of today. Four straight blows and a whole bunch of hits. There is plenty to criticize about this show, the Netherlands has really seen The Black Keys better, but there are evenings that are a lot less than this one, especially at the beginning of a very, very long tour. This band will probably be much more developed in a few months, there’s the diesel comparison again.
Seen: May 5, 2024 in Ziggo Dome, Amsterdam
