Album Review - Black Keys - El Camino

Album Rating:

10

I sat quietly by as a handful of friends picked apart the latest from the Black Keys. They weren't just being meticulous, they were being fucking assholes. "If I wanted something over-produced I'd turn on the radio" and "I liked 'em more without all the polish" and that was when I tuned them out and turned on my internal movie chase scene while Sister played on loud.

The Black Keys as a band don't need to make an amazing album anymore, they've achieved that more than twice and from here on out everything can be considered extra leftover cake in the fridge as far as I'm concerned. It's not that I'm giving them leeway they don't need, it's that people seem to think that bands forget where they came from by making improvements. Bettering yourself does not make you a sell out, working with seasoned and amazing fucking producers does not make you a square, and no where in the code of rock and roll does it state that a band that starts with two beards can't lose at least once.

I've loved the BKeys dirty, I've loved them while cleaning up, I've fucking despised their jaunt into rap, but make no mistake, this new album is fucking awesome.

El Camino is a fucking soundtrack, taking the listener from dirty dive bars to dirty late model sedan backseats to a fucking rock show where the hairless (like myself) toss invisible hair they don't have like they were born with a full on fucking mane. Everything about this fucking album screams hell yes, and with the advancement of riffage and the addition of synths and female backing singers, it's tough to top as a rock album, not to mention compete against the rest of the Black Keys catalog.

So far every track I've tried to single out as a potential favorite is no better or worse than any other track, and seamless is the only word I can think of when I look at my iTunes play count and see that I've listened to every track exactly 11 times. I have no favorites. The entire thing works. It's fucking annoyingly perfect on the whole, and when I try talking myself off of the Black Keys dick, I start the album over and I'm again done for 38 minutes (and change when you include the dick adjustments).

Black Keys' El Camino is the first and only album on my 4 year old son's iPod. fucking awesome.