The Black Keys make great music, and The Black Keys are great live. The Dispatch review of last night’s show at the LC Pavilion is… okay. Describing Brothers as the band’s defining album is way off base: it features some very good stuff, but also several utterly skip-worthy tracks. I agree, though, with the tone of the Dispatch review, as I heartily recommend seeing the Keys live if you like bluesy rock even a little.

I’ve got all but the first Keys album – yes, I’m one of those late arrivals who didn’t hear of the Akron duo until Attack & Release – and couldn’t have been much happier with the set list. Although Dan Auerbach’s voice lost the battle against drums and guitar, the rocking-ness of his guitar and Patrick Carney’s drums completely made up for that.  I was hoping to hear 10 A.M Automatic, but when a band has 6 albums to cover it’s hard to be picky!

If you want to see a movie based on a web comic which is itself heavily influenced by video games, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is nearly perfect. It’s more stylized than I expected, which won’t sit well with some viewers, but I was impressed. The trailers had me looking forward to indier-than-thou dry humor in a geeky wrapper, with some goofy action for good measure. That could have been entertaining, if not exactly original… given that Michael Cera himself has been in, what, 19 films matching that description? Pilgrim is, in fact, something unique, and something very, very funny.