Dan Auerbach, the producer and guitarist/vocalist for The Black Keys, also has a side project called The Arcs. And on top of that side project, it’s clear that over the past few weeks he’s also taken on a second side project: watching Making a Murderer, Netflix’s true crime documentary series that was 10 years in the making and is now enraging people across the country with its scrutiny of the injustices in the duel convictions of Manitowoc, Wisconsin resident, Steven Avery. As Flavorwire’s Alison Herman stated, the most eye-opening takeaway of the series is that it shows an unsettling disregard for “the entire premise behind the presumption of innocence,” which “is that, on balance, a society that punishes someone without sufficient proof is worse than a society that lets a murderer, let alone an innocent man, go free.”
Auerbach’s band — who released their first album, Yours, Dreamily in September — wrote this statement accompanying their song, titled “Lake Superior”:
It’s like Billy Childish says, “We live in troubled times”. Last week, we got a sneak peek at what goes on behind the curtains of our criminal justice system. A few sleepless nights later we gathered in the studio and wrote this song.
The track uses a light tone of psychedelic dissociation, nonchalantly laying out its troubling lyrics and poetically recalling various elements of the case, beginning with the verse:
“On a stretch of sand, sweet northern breeze/Manitowoc put/Avery on the beach/Your alibi, will never do/When the whole town’s got it out for you…Where the mice of men are chained and bruised/Where to stand accused is to admit you lose”
…leading into an equally impassively sung chorus of:
“I wanna know/People outdoor/Ain’t gonna go out and act insane/My Baby girl/Out in a world/All alone burns a hole in my brain”
The proceeds of “Lake Superior” — which will soon be available to purchase — will go to the Innocence Project, an organization “dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted individuals through DNA testing and reforming the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice.”
Listen to the track: