Review: The Black Keys, "El Camino"

El Camino
The Black Keys
Nonesuch
12.6.11

Recently, myself, my younger sister, and a mutual friend had one of those "blind men identifying an elephant" discussions where we all realized we saw the Black Keys in a different light. Our friend identified them as blues-rock, I saw them as a garage rock outfit, and my sister considered them a blue-eyed soul group.

We were all correct, of course. Certainly Akron's answer to Detroit's White Stripes is all those things and more: they both know how to combine epic blues tropes with low-fi grit and a classicist pop sensibility. The difference is that the Blacks, perhaps owing to their respective areas of formation, are a little sweeter and churchier than the Whites, the steady Blind Willie Johnson to Jack White's dark, declamatory Blind Willie McTell. 

So it was absolutely no surprise that Danger Mouse, a producer who knows all about bridging the unbridgeable chasm between indie rock and modern R&B, was able to help transform these critical darlings into Grammy gold with last year's "Tighten Up" from the album Brothers. Now DM is back full-time, and the duo's recorded the follow-up in that modern-day mecca for hipster roots authenticity, Nashville. The result is a record as unprepossessing, yet as gaudy and fun, as the white trash chariot it's named after. Not to mention the equally cheesy cover which houses it.

It'd be tempting to say that the Keys were retreating on El Camino, downplaying their bid at pop gold to reinforce their indie cred. And to a certain extent it's true: there's no crossgenre jumping like "Everlasting Light" or the single which broke them big, "Tighten Up," nothing as immediately arresting and emotionally resonant as "Ten Cent Pistol" or "The Go-Getter." The crunch is definitely back, a more subtle (but no less loud) variant on the glitter sludge of everything from The Big Come Up to Rubber Factory. The subtleties are there, though, mostly in the mix -- the airbrushed bells and whistles adding ghostly menace to "Dead and Gone," or the slightly psych-bubblegum shiver that runs up the leg of the best thing here, "Sister," and the slick ironic go-go feel of "Stop Stop."

Those touches are unfortunately in short supply, overall, so while it's not a full march back into the cave, it's hard not to feel like the Black Keys are trying to reconnect with roots they never really had. Ironists they are not, but they also don't have the personality of their fellow indie kids who suddenly got popular -- their romanticism isn't strong enough to ground them like Kings of Leon, and they don't possess Jack White's blood-on-the-floor vision of personal relationships. They're great, rootsy ear candy, but that's all they are, and while there's enough lingering essence of Brothers to sweeten the deal and suggest they haven't forgotten everything they've learned, El Camino often feels like the most unnecessary of respectability bids, the kind that makes a group more anonymous rather than more real. Which means they may end up getting classified as garage rockers after all: their default move is to rock out.

Graded using the Third Eye Method:

Impact: 62. Fun to go out and get drunk with, but you wouldn't fall in love with it.
Invention: 53. Not as trippy as Attack and Release, not as radio-ready as Brothers, not as adventurous as the Blackroc project. And not much of an identity beyond what it isn't.
Integrity: 68. The BKs never trade visceral punch for indie cred. Even when they maybe should.