Brothers is the sixth studio album by American rock duo the Black Keys, released on May 18, 2010, through Nonesuch Records. It served as the follow-up to Attack & Release (2008), the band's first professionally-recorded and non-self-produced studio album. Brothers was largely produced by the band alongside Mark Neill, with the exception of "Tighten Up" produced by Danger Mouse. The album was recorded in late 2009 at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Sheffield, Alabama, Neill's Soil of the South studio in La Mesa, California, the Black Keys' home studio in Akron, Ohio, and the Bunker on Apple in Portland, Oregon.

Prior to recording Brothers, the Black Keys' singer and guitarist Dan Auerbach released Keep It Hid, his first solo studio album, in early 2009. The band's drummer, Patrick Carney, was upset by the release, leading to a brief strife within the band; a tense recent divorce had been the primary source for Carney's anger and depression. After reconciling, the band teamed up with Neill to begin recording a new album. The band continued utilizing a rhythmic approach to songwriting, with recording conditions at the slightly derelict Muscle Shoals leading to minimalistic compositions and an emphasis on the songs' low end. The bulk of the album was recorded at Muscle Shoals, helping to create the album's central sound. The band also sought a more simplistic album package in contrast to their more vivid album covers of years past; Carney's brother Michael was recruited to design the album art.

Brothers had a short pre-release promotional window, with "Tighten Up" being released as its lead single less than a month prior to the album's release. The song became the band's first Billboard Hot 100 appearance, peaking at number 87, and also spent 10 weeks atop on the Billboard Alternative Songs chart. Brothers earned positive reviews and became the band's best-performing album at the time, peaking at number 3 on the Billboard 200 in the US. The songs "Tighten Up" and "Howlin' for You" have been certified platinum in the US by the RIAA, with "Everlasting Light" and "Next Girl" also being certified gold. The album has been certified double-platinum in the US, triple-platinum in Canada, and gold in the UK. At the 53rd Annual Grammy Awards in 2011, the Black Keys received four nominations, winning Best Alternative Music Album for Brothers and Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal for "Tighten Up". Michael Carney additionally won Best Recording Package for his art direction.

Background Tensions had grown within the band by 2009, and the two embarked on side projects. Guitarist/vocalist Dan Auerbach was introduced to engineer Mark Neill through friend Liam Watson, and with his assistance built his own analogue studio (later named Easy Eye Sound System) at his home in Akron, Ohio; in late 2007, the two convened in Neill's La Mesa, California, home to record. The sessions became Auerbach's solo debut Keep It Hid, which was released in February 2009 on Nonesuch Records to positive reviews. Drummer Patrick Carney, who had not been informed of Auerbach's solo plans, was livid: "Everybody knew but me. I was mad at Dan. I was mad at our manager. I was mad at everybody." Carney was afraid Auerbach had moved on and was on the verge of quitting the band; the two hardly spoke for several months and another Black Keys recording was uncertain. Auerbach, who had played Carney the recordings but failed to mention it would see release, found it increasingly difficult to communicate with the drummer due to his antipathy for Carney's then-wife, Denise Grollmus. Auerbach said, "I really hated her from the start and didn't want anything to do with her."

Carney realized his anger was misdirected as he was coming off a rough divorce. He and Grollmus were married for two years, but together for nine. According to the drummer, his ex-wife slept with his best friend, lied to him for several years and bilked him for money. By the end of the relationship, Carney was depressed, drinking heavily, and had gained 25 pounds. "Homeboy was miserable," Auerbach said of his bandmate "He was being manipulated mentally and emotionally." Carney eventually broke off the relationship with a phone call while his wife was in Europe. Eventually, Auerbach and Carney met to discuss how important the band was to both of them. "Then we hugged and made up and it's been all good ever since," said Auerbach. The duo soon met at Neill's La Mesa home and got to work on several ideas, notably recording "These Days", which would ultimately become the closing track on Brothers. Things moved carefully in La Mesa when conversations shifted to Neill's old studio in Georgia. The three began discussing heading down South to complete the bulk of the album in a historic old studio. Sun Studio and Phillips Recording in Memphis, as well as Robin Hood Studios in Tyler, Texas, were contenders, and the band even considered an old VFW hall in Neill's home town of Valdosta. The band desired, most of all, to get out of town and have the tracks imbued with a Southern kind of atmosphere. Logistical problems immediately surfaced with both Sun and Phillips, and Auerbach suggested Muscle Shoals Sound Studio.

Muscle Shoals, located in northwestern Alabama, opened in April 1969 and hosted several legendary acts, most famously The Rolling Stones and Paul Simon, before it moved from its original location on Jackson Highway in 1978 to a larger, more modern facility. The studio was closed in 2005 and had not seen recording in nearly 30 years, most recently having operated as a poorly maintained museum. The studio was on a short list of legendary venues where Auerbach had always wanted to record. Neill contacted Noel Webster, the musician and entrepreneur responsible for refurbishing the old studio, who cut the band a "good day rate, albeit with the clear understanding that we were getting nothing but an empty building with a bathroom, and yes, air conditioning. So we knew right from the start that we really would be trucking in our own equipment."

Recording and production

Neill, Auerbach, and Carney arrived at Muscle Shoals Sound on August 16, 2009—coincidentally 40 years to the day singer-songwriter R. B. Greaves cut "Take a Letter Maria" at the studio, the first hit record to originate from the building. The group hauled a truckload of Auerbach's equipment from Easy Eye Sound System in Akron, as well as Neill's personal gear from California. Neill's equipment included portions of a Universal Audio 610 console (the same desk featured during the early days of Muscle Shoals) and a late 1950s Pultec panning mixer, as well as a 10:2 Studer monitoring mixer originally designed for classical music recording. The studio was very much a museum when they arrived—they found vintage recording gear that no longer operated, along with photos on the walls of legendary performers, such as Lynyrd Skynyrd, who had once recorded there. Auerbach immediately took down the photos, feeling they were distracting decorations. The band put a piece of Plexiglas on top of the studio's non-functional console to hold their own digital recording equipment. The group experienced technical difficulties while recording. However, they were not caused by the studio, but rather by utility work on nearby telephone poles. Some of Neill's equipment was wrecked, including burned-out microphones. Compositions were kept very simple due to technical limitations. Neill said, "Thanks to the Studer mixer, we seldom went beyond 10 tracks." He occasionally had to resort to digital sources; as the studio's downstairs echo chambers were long gone, Neill attached a mono digital reverberator to the Studer console. He also provided additional guitar and percussion parts during the sessions.

Entering the sessions, Carney had a negative mindset due to his divorce. He said, "At the time it was really, really difficult for me because I had just split with my wife after a nine-year relationship and the last place I wanted to be was the middle of fucking nowhere in Alabama, sitting in a dark room." The first song recorded at Muscle Shoals, "Next Girl", helped shape the direction of the sessions. Auerbach's lyrics for the song about moving on resonated with the "bummed-out [and] spacey" Carney, and Auerbach noticed an improvement in his bandmate's mentality immediately after he heard them. Auerbach said, "When he heard the lyrics, he was just so stoked. The rest of the session it was smooth sailing." "Next Girl" was first cut with Carney playing drums and Auerbach playing bass, without guide vocals or the band's more usual guitar. The group continued to use a rhythm-first approach throughout the sessions, recording a basic arrangement of drums and bass before overdubbing guitar, keyboards, vocals, and percussion later. This imbued several songs, such as "Everlasting Light", "Howlin' for You", and "Sinister Kid", with a bass-driven sound. Neill found the emphasis on bass was also a result of the studio's acoustics:

The group found their time at Muscle Shoals to be productive and inspirational, as they recorded all day in "a kind of focused frenzy" with a sense of immediacy. Neill recalled, "Things were happening that were very, very transcendent, as soon as they began playing. First few takes, we literally couldn't believe what we were hearing. Dan and Pat were kind of looking at each other saying, 'That doesn't even sound like us.' Seriously." Much of the songs crafted were based on "idea fragments" that had been cut beforehand as demos at both Neill's and Auerbach's studios, but eventually evolved into entirely different creations as the sessions progressed. The band recorded 10 of the 15 tracks on Brothers in their 10 days at the studio.

Due to the long hours working in the studio, Neill, Auerbach, and Carney generally only had time to kill at night when fewer retailers are open. Furthermore, Sheffield was remote and isolated; Neill said, "What they were complaining about is that at night, after we were done, they wanted to go swarm around and do something. There's nothing. I told them that before we went out. Unless you want to go see a movie or something, or go to Walmart and stand around under the fluorescent lights. So what did we do? We went to Walmart." Carney said that the trio were "just so bored that we were getting so fucked up every night at the hotel," and one drunken night the group stayed up watching YouTube clips of Freddie King. The following day, the musicians showed up at the studio and found a harpsichord. The band's manager had received a drunken voicemail from the band the night before asking for a harpsichord. The trio soon grew restless for a change, and after finalizing the tenth and final song at Muscle Shoals, the band left town. Back in La Mesa, Neill tweaked the multitracks, then filed the recordings away and awaited further instruction. The Black Keys eventually decided to re-work the overtly swampy tracks from Muscle Shoals using more modern machinery, and they subsequently employed producer Tchad Blake to re-mix their songs.

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