Singer/guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney are a pair of guys in their early 20s from Akron, but on their second album as Black Keys, they sound as if they’d spent 50 years soaking up the Mississippi blues and spitting it back out in neighborhood juke joints. A fanatic of the kind of rough-and-tumble blues the Fat Possum label specializes in, Auerbach cut his teeth by driving down to Mississippi on several occasions and striking up a friendship with fellow Fat Possum artist T-Model Ford, who plays the kind of dragged-through-the-dirt blues that Black Keys aspire to re-create. And though he can’t fall back on 60 years of hard luck to inspire him, Auerbach does sound like a 72-year-old black man just groovin’ on his back porch with nothing but his guitar and Carney’s hard-driving backbeats to guide him.

Unlike T-Model, who sticks to a fairly simple style, Auerbach punctuates these songs with swift, sleek licks and riffs. " Set Me Free " is a blues party anthem that conjures up sweaty late-night dance sessions fueled by plenty of moonshine and sets the tone for the album. " Dark Row " brings some raucous punk spirit to the blues party, but " If You See Me " and " Midnight " are the kind of pure, Mississippi sharecropper blues that have earned Black Keys their place on a label that defined its mission with releases by Junior Kimbrough and R.L. Burnside, two of the other blues masters Auerbach has clearly studied in depth.

(The Black Keys headline T.T. the Bear’s Place on Friday May 16; call 617-492-BEAR.)