By Paul Robicheau

The band tucked two songs from its new album into a career-spanning 95-minute show tilted toward six tunes from the Black Keys’ 2010 commercial breakthrough Brothers.

Patrick Carney and Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys at MGM Fenway. Photo: Paul Robicheau

The Ohio Players, a 1970s funk-pop group from Dayton, sang about a love roller coaster. Akron’s garage-blues duo the Black Keys have learned a lesson about the roller coaster of the music business. Singer/guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney went from making raw basement recordings in the early aughts to Grammy-winning fame a decade later, but they fired bigwig management after a 2024 US arena tour was bagged for low ticket sales.

Gary Clark Jr. at MGM Fenway. Photo: Paul Robicheau

Did that experience leave a bad aftertaste as the band flipped to the more “intimate experience” of smaller halls for a 2025 tour? For Saturday’s show at the comfortably packed 5,000-capacity MGM Music Hall at Fenway, the Black Keys totally ignored the (cleverly titled Ohio Players) album that the 2024 tour had been slated to support. Instead, the band tucked two songs from its new No Rain, No Flowers (the title track and equally chorus-driven “Man on a Mission”) to a career-spanning 95-minute show tilted toward six tunes from the Black Keys’ 2010 commercial breakthrough Brothers.

The move to a theater-sized club came with the added bonus of Gary Clark Jr. — who headlined the same room last year — as an opener. The Texas guitar slinger ranged from the weighty blues-rock of “When My Train Pulls In” to his Curtis Mayfield-like falsetto in “Feed the Babies.” But while his 55-minute turn was more concise than his two-hour-plus stroll last year, Clark and his band mates shared as much flogging as finesse in their solos.

The Black Keys began the evening as their career did, a duo rocking in simple spotlights, dwarfed before a tall red curtain. They lit into a medley of songs from their first two albums: “Thickfreakness” (clearly inspired by Mississippi hill-country blues), “The Breaks,” and the sparsely riffed “I’ll Be Your Man,” where Carney shook a maraca in place of one drumstick. Then the curtain parted to reveal a back line of five additional musicians in front of a second curtain cut into ribbony strands that reflected a bolder light show. With fans piping up to sing along with the poppy bop “Gold on the Ceiling,” lashed by Auerbach’s bluesy slide, the Black Keys were fully off and running.

Like their upper Midwest predecessors, the White Stripes, the drumming half of the Black Keys came across as the weaker musical link in the band. Carney mostly stuck to an elemental thump with beats and fills alike, while Auerbach stretched more limberly into their songs with both hearty vocals and guitar. Loosely tethered by a coiled guitar cord, he roamed the stage, at times stepping onto the edge of the drum riser to face off with Carney. He often started or ended songs by teasing feedback from his amps.

Auerbach bridged power chords and psychedelia in “I Got Mine” (initiating a dynamic mid-song buildup with Carney), matched his guitar work with robust vocals in nugget “Heavy Soul,” and played solo acoustic to begin the encore with “Little Black Submarines,” getting the crowd to sing along to the line “Everybody knows that a broken heart is blind” before he switched to an electric rave-up.

Patrick Carney and Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys at MGM Fenway. Photo: Paul Robicheau

“Everlasting Light” lent a welcome change of pace early on with its slower tempo, Auerbach singing in falsetto while a huge mirror ball scattered light through drifts of stage fog. And a relaxed cover of Canned Heat’s “On the Road Again” provided a nice touch toward the end of the set, even if much of the crowd seemed either unfamiliar with the old song or less impressed.

The accompanying musicians literally remained in the background, lending subtle icing throughout, though two songs from the Keys’ post-peak 2014 Danger Mouse collaboration True Blue gave them performance room. Ray Jacildo’s keyboard greased “Fever,” while Joe Harrison lent a neat bass line to “Weight of Love,” where Auerbach ripped dual harmony leads with London guitarist Barrie Cadogan, who worked with Liam Gallagher and Morrissey. And the backing players floated harmony vocals in a woozy, red-lit “Psychotic Girl.”

As the encore rounded out with the 2011 hit “Lonely Boy,” Carney was in a groove, shifting from shuffle to light bash as Auerbach sang, “I’ve got a love that keeps me waiting.” And the wait was worth it for the better venue. The Black Keys were in the zone and fans were riding a roller coaster of love.

Paul Robicheau served more than 20 years as contributing editor for music at the Improper Bostonian in addition to writing and photography for the Boston Globe, Rolling Stone, and many other publications. He was also the founding arts editor of Boston Metro.