The Black Keys, following the close of a successful tour with Kings of Leon, kicked off their fully sold-out headlining tour of the United States last weekend in San Diego. Yesterday, with scorching temperatures in Los Angeles reaching all-time highs, the band kept things hot indoors with the first of two consecutive shows at the Hollywood Palladium. Tonight's show there will be followed by another two consecutive sold-out shows at the Fox Theater in Oakland in the coming days.

Previewing the two Palladium shows, the Los Angeles Times called The Black Keys "brilliant." LA Weekly's Falling James said bandmates Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney "are heavily influenced by the blues and late-’60s power trios, but they transmogrify such inspirations with an approach that manages to be fresh and vital instead of nostalgic and stultifying."

Following last night's gig, LA Weekly reviewer Molly Bergen reports that from the start, "Auerbach's guitar grabbed the crowd by the throat and refused to let go. The only thing that kept the riffs in line was Carney's drumming, which danced nimbly about like a lion tamer lovingly controlling his beast. In front of a giant poster of two hands clasped together the two blues brothers tore through a set that pleased both the purists and the newcomers."

With only Auerbach and Carney on stage, it was "Just two men making hot, dirty blues tunes that growled and crawled up the hips of every person in that place."

Even with a LA second show to come tonight, Bergen says it was clear that the audience last night wanted more for themselves. "If it had been up to the crowd," she writes, "they those guys would have played until they had crumpled on the ground with exhaustion. Hopefully, they've got enough in them for another round at the Palladium tonight. Something tells me that they do."

Read the complete concert review and see photos from the show at laweekly.com.

Pitchfork was there as well and has several photos from the event at pitchfork.com.

---

The band has just announced that they will be heading to the Southern Hemisphere at the end of January to join the Big Day Out festival tour, making one stop in New Zealand and five across Australia, their first in either country since the release of their new album, Brothers.

For more tour information, visit nonesuch.com/on-tour. To pick up a copy of Brothers on CD, vinyl, or in the deluxe edition, all with instant downloads of the complete album as 320 kbps MP3s included at checkout, head the Nonesuch Store.