The list of creditable blues-punk duos is long and worn — from Doo Rag, 20 Miles, and Cash Money up through Mr. Airplane Man, the Soledad Brothers, the Immortal Lee County Killers, and, uh, damn, I must be forgetting someone. Akron’s the Black Keys are a blues-punk duo too, but they’re different in one crucial respect, and I guess there’s no other way to put this: frontman Dan Auerbach sounds like a black guy. Not like a Jon Spencer–ish urban-hipster-trying-to-sound-like-a-black-guy. No, like a real black guy. And a pretty damned talented black guy at that. So the biggest shock on the Keys’ debut, The Big Come Up, is the revelation that it was made by two white guys from Ohio. That’s partly because Auerbach plays guitar as if he’d been schooled at Junior Kimbrough’s juke joint down in Clarksdale, Mississippi, and partly because he testifies like some long-lost, battle-hardened ’60s soul warrior.

Writes like one too. "I’ll Be Your Man" and "Yearnin’ " are virtually indistinguishable from the gritty and lusty devotionals that Stax used to mint by the dozens, and if you hear a hint of Exile-era Stones in the Keys’ delivery, you might also be reminded of early-’70s Ike Turner when they turn to a sweat-stained reworking of the Beatles’ "She Said, She Said." "The Breaks" and "Busted" stretch out into ass-beating hard funk. And the disc’s shack-shaking, electrifying blues workouts — "Leavin’ Trunk," "Do the Rump" — display an affinity for Hendrixian heart-on-fire anarchy alongside an intuitive knack for the wobbly, crackling drone-and-stomp of Fat Possum label septuagenarian hill-country wild men like T-Model Ford and R.L. Burnside. Those guys are more than just influences: as of last month, when the Keys signed to Fat Possum, they’re labelmates, too.