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The Black Keys on stage December 2010. © Tim Mosenfelder/Corbis

Brothers, the sixth full-length album from Ohio-based blues-rock duo The Black Keys, was one of our favourite albums of last year.

Back in summer '10, shortly after the album's release, Total Guitar caught up with guitarist Dan Auerbach to find out about what went into making the album and to chat about the blues...

Did you spend more time honing your songwriting on Brothers than previously?

"Well, some of the songs were pretty old, but I think the sound of the record is just a testament to the way that Pat [Carney, drums] and I are able to work so quickly together and get our ideas across to each other so easily.

"I prefer limitations. It's almost like the more you know, the worse it gets."

"Once we start working on a song we finish it in a couple of hours and we don't come back to it. Like, [album opener] Everlasting Light, I originally wrote that on piano as a gospel song and we recorded it and it ended up sounding like it does on the record [a repeated fuzzed-up, palm-muted staccato riff], which is not necessarily how I had envisioned it, but it's just what we did that afternoon. The record only took a week and a half."

Your production approach seems to have changed since Attack & Release…

"One of the things that really made a big difference with this record is that we started every song with bass and drums, and that forced us to focus on the groove. That really helped to shape the sound of the record.

"I think the production's actually rawer on Brothers; it's just the way it's presented [that might sound smoother]. For instance, with the drums on Attack & Release there were maybe 15 mics on them; on the new record there's one or two. On the new record there's no song that's over 10 or 12 tracks in total."

What equipment did you record with?

"On this record I kept it pretty simple. I bought a couple of fuzz pedals. I have an old Italian Cry Baby wah that I really like, and a Boss Tremolo, and a couple of those small Line 6 ToneCore pedals - I think I had the Verbzilla reverb and the Echo Park delay.

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