Black Keys, The - El Camino (Album)

For album number seven, The Black Keys once again opted for super producer Danger Mouse (Brian Burton) to not only produce, but also to help write all eleven tracks on ‘El Camino’. This album marks the third time the band have used Danger Mouse in the studio, understandably so too, after he won a Grammy for Best Producer of 2010 for their album ‘Brothers’ among other albums. However ‘El Camino’ is the first time they have shared the writing duties with him.

‘El Camino’s title comes from a Chevrolet sedan (a slightly modern version of a yank tank) but also translates to “the road” or “the path” in Spanish. However, strangely the car featured on the cover is actually a Chrysler Town & Country, which was chosen due to the band touring America in one at the beginning of their career.

For a while now The Black Keys have been America’s indie blues rock darlings, loved by critics and fairly commercially successful yet still not mainstream enough to prompt early fans to stop listening. ‘El Camino’ has been widely praised by critics and also debuted at number two on the Billboard 200 by impressively selling over 200,000 copies in its first week of release. This album has catapulted them into a new stratosphere, yet the content manages to see it steer clear of mainstream and commercial pressures.

‘El Camino’ reminds you just what can be achieved when talented musicians head into a studio for a month or so and really just make their own music without outside distractions. That being said, there are influences that can be spotted when listening, particularly earlier American rock. The band claim that The Cars, The Beatles, T. Rex, Ramones and The Clash were influences on the sound of the record. You’ll notice the album has a noticeably faster pace than that of ‘Brothers’ as the duo grew frustrated with how difficult it was to perform slower tracks from that album in a live setting.

The whole album really feels like a bunch of genres mashed together, but at the same time very coherent and certainly feels like one body of work not just a collection of very different tracks pressed onto the same disc. Each track features elements of various genres, making each track flow onto the next and also sound similar, but in a good way. There’s a dirty unpolished feel to the album that is evident from the first track, ‘Lonely Boy’ which is part sing-along and equal parts blues rock with a fuzzy guitar laden feel.

The album used old fashion recording techniques and equipment, which helps give it the old fashioned sheen. One example is the studio, Easy Eye Sound Studios, which frontman Dan Auerbach built in 2010 when relocating from Ohio to Nashville, Tennessee. It is essentially a home made studio, and the band utilised its amateur nature to its advantage. They even used the bathroom as an echo chamber and recorded vocals and handclaps in it. I’m no “technofile” obsessed with vinyl by any stretch, but the buzzy and old-school nature of recording leads me to think that listening to this album on a record player that was made in the seventies would be one hell of an experience. Logistically much easier, would be listening with a good pair of over-ear headphones, something I wholeheartedly recommend.

It’s such a solid album, that it’s no surprise it has made lots of “best of 2011” lists despite being released in December. I feel picking out tracks is unfair because it just needs to be consumed as a whole, and not on shuffle. However these few tracks are gravy on top of one hell of an album; ‘Gold on the Ceiling’, ‘Little Black Submarines’ and ‘Run Right Back’. At the end of a review I normally either recommend an album or not, on this occasion I simply must insist you go out and get this, because this is already a classic.

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