El Camino
Keeping the momentum going after their breakthrough *Brothers*, The Black Keys reunite with Danger Mouse, who produced 2008\'s *Attack and Release*. Taking on a co-writing role as well this time, the producer helps Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney stray from their Southern-rock comfort zone. Increasing both the tempos and the hooks, *El Camino* is a joyous, danceable rock album. Standouts like the infectious, fuzztoned single \"Lonely Boy\" and the acoustic-into-electric epic \"Little Black Submarines\" are among the duo\'s most exciting songs.
The Black Keys' seventh album features Danger Mouse's strongest production work for the group and a mood that's frivolous, fun, and unabashedly corny.
The Black Keys have always had a little Bad Company in them, even back when they were jamming on Junior Kimbrough songs in small clubs. All it took to expose the band’s arena-rock side was a series of actual arena gigs, which finally happened with 2010’s Brothers, one of the few rock records of the 21st century to get…
The Black Keys may have started out as a straightforward, minimalist blues-rock outfit, but the band has quickly proven it…
Picking up on the ‘60s soul undercurrent of Brothers, the Black Keys smartly capitalize on their 2010 breakthrough by plunging headfirst into retro-soul on El Camino. Savvy operators that they are, the Black Keys don’t opt for authenticity à la Sharon Jones or Eli “Paperboy” Reed: they bring Danger Mouse back into the fold, the producer adding texture and glitter to the duo’s clean, lean songwriting. Apart from “Little Black Submarines,” an acoustic number that crashes into Zeppelin heaviosity as it reaches its coda, every one of the 11 songs here clocks in under four minutes, adding up to a lean 38-minute rock & roll rush, an album that’s the polar opposite of the Black Keys’ previous collaboration with Danger Mouse, the hazy 2008 platter Attack & Release.
The Black Keys' Patrick Carney and Dan Auerbach bum rush through El Camino like cats in heat, barely stopping to catch a breath.
After the R&B-flavoured rock of Brothers, the Black Keys' one-dimensional seventh album is a disappointment, writes <strong>Kitty Empire</strong>
The Black Keys have replaced their sometimes insular focus on blues formalism with an emphasis on pop hooks.
<p>The best rock'n'roll album of the year? <strong>Michael Hann</strong> thinks so</p>
Ten years into the game, Patrick Carney and Dan Auerbach add funk and soul to their potent blues-rock brew, with triumphant results...Of all El Camino’s many achievements, the most easily overlooked might be the fact that it exists at all