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It was pay day recently so I took myself down to a record shop a couple of days ago. There were two albums being released that I was after and there was a third that I’d resolved not to buy. The third was Brothers by The Black Keys. I’d decided not to buy it as I thought I had enough Black Keys records in my collection already, and to save some money. While looking for the other two though, I heard, playing very loudly through the shops sounds system, something that sounded very good and very much like The Black Keys (if you’ve not heard them before, they’ve a distinctive sound). I listened to three songs (tracks two to four on the new album it transpired) and knew pretty much instantly that I was, of course, going to buy it after all. To help seal the deal, the cover artwork is about the best I’ve seen in a long time. So what’s my point? Well, what conspired to make me buy the album? Firstly walking to a real shop, secondly that they were playing that very album, loudly and through a good sound system and because they liked it, and thirdly that the physical object itself was cool as hell (honestly, take a look...)



At a time when there’s much talk about the death of the high street and the redundancy of CDs themselves, all of these things made me feel, for a while at least, better about the world.

And the album? It sounds pretty much like all their other records – it’s fantastic.