The Black Keys: a review

I wrote this with the half-assed intention of submitting it to my university's newspaper. I would quite appreciate any comments, suggestions or criticism, given that from what I gather, some of you actually do this stuff for a living (or at least a hobby).
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The Black Keys at Emo's: April 29, 2005

Bodies swayed. Bottles clattered into plastic barrels. The sickly-sweet smell of beer and cigarette smoke (“VOTE NO on May 7,” advised the signs taped on the walls) hung like an oily film above the heads of the sweaty crowd. In other words: another night at Emo’s.
“It’s hot down here,” declared singer-guitarist Dan Auerbach. It was hard to tell if he was talking about the weather or his own blistering performance, but one thing was clear: the Black Keys had come to town, and they had come to rock.
If you were to walk in on the middle of a Black Keys performance, the first thing you’d notice is the sheer loudness of it (the weak and the sensible brought earplugs to protect their hearing, but the truly dedicated would have the ringing in their ears all weekend to remind them of the all-too-brief visit from Akron, OH’s finest—their performance was one of the loudest I’ve heard at Emo’s). But if you braved the noise, you would soon realize that the volume of the music is impressive, almost overpowering, but that volume is a mask for what makes the Black Keys truly notable: their ability to create a channel from the performers to their listeners, carried by the gut-shaking sound waves into the soul of the audience and back again. During one of the early highlights, “Busted”, the crowd watched with rapt awe for a few brief moments as Auerbach, Hendrix-style, coaxed a few squeals of feedback out of his guitar before slamming back into the propulsive stomp of the song’s verses
The ‘Keys themselves aren’t much to look at. They are both passably handsome and untidily attired in the manner of working musicians, but the true wonder of their performance is the feeling of community, and of communion. These two men pound out their songs on their battered instruments (for Patrick Carney, a small-ish drum kit, and for Dan an electric guitar; he played only one throughout the evening), and it would be an understandable, if naïve, mistake to think their performance a Friday show like any other. But once the crowd was hopping along and the musicians were deep in the meditative catharsis of their performance, it resembled nothing so much as a revival meeting, with Patrick’s drums pounding authority, and Dan’s searing, jagged guitar work the voice of both reproach and salvation. The two of them together produce more noise than any duo this side of Lightning Bolt, but the fullness of this two-man assault is representative of their best quality. Just as the Black Keys’ music is more than the sum of its two parts, the feeling of their performances is more than just a rock show. They have come to unite their listeners in appreciation of blasts of bluesy sludge, but also to show us that they, too, are part of this communion. They might be making the music, but without us to listen, sway, jump, dance, scream and bob along in response, it would just be noise.
By the time the ‘Keys closed their set with the raging “Have Love, Will Travel,” the hands of the converted were so high in the air, in various forms of applause and salutation, that the entire crowd seemed to swing from the rafters. When Dan and Patrick stepped offstage to recharge before the encore, the fervor in the crowd was audible as those pressed closest against the stage began chanting for their return. After a quick break, the ‘Keys closed down with two more songs, to the delirious applause of their fans, old and new alike.
Earlier in the evening, Auerbach had growled the lyrics to one of his songs: “I’m gonna set you free.” In a way, he already had.