Worried Note Jun 09, 2023

The Black Keys have earned a national reputation as one of the heaviest, grooviest bands circulating these days.

They proved that and a whole lot more Thursday to a beyond-crowded Gallivan Center crowd as part of Salt Lake City's Twilight Concert Series.

At times, the Black Keys' fist-pumping, jumping-in-unison crowd looked as if it was taking part in a communal exorcism rather than watching a top-notch blues-based duo hammer home its music.

During the bouncing, militant groove of "Slapshot," while various college-age men and women were body surfing over the heads of fellow crowd members in the first five rows, two young children suddenly bubbled up out of the milieu.

This caused guitarist Dan Auerbach to stop playing so "we can get these little kids out of here." As drummer Patrick Carney brought down the volume, security helped get the youngsters out of the way.

With everyone apparently safe, the band resumed its musical pounding of the audience.

Not only do the Black Keys work fans into a frenzy, they do so with a seriously blues-soaked groove, repeatedly demonstrated during songs such as "She's Gone," and "Your Touch."

When Auerbach was a youth, his father played many old-time blues records for him. That influence was evident as the band's thrashy, reel-and-roll sound clearly owes as much to Son House as it does to Black Sabbath or Led Zeppelin.

Dressed in a '70s-influenced Western shirt, Auerbach, the duo's frontman, found his heartfelt singing joined by the crowd during "Strange Times."

And even though Auerbach and his desperate, thoughtful lyrics will soon embark on a solo tour, it was Carney's breaking-out-of-jail drumming that shone even brighter as the audience throbbed up and down during much of the pair's 70-minute set.

The two locked up in tighter-than-tight lockstep for the set closer "I Got Mine," off their 2008 album "Attack and Release."

That phrase seemed an appropriate description for concertgoers who trickled toward their cars after the band concluded its melodic pillaging.

Earlier Thursday evening, the infinitely mellower Canadian indie-rock band Human Highway preceded the headliners with a perfunctory 60-minute-set that seemed more family friendly and more benign in general than what followed.