THE BLACK KEYS

The Black Keys move beyond blooze with El Camino

by Matt Ashare

The Black Keys outdo themselves on the new El Camino

It was far, far too easy when the Black Keys emerged in 2002 to see the duo as essentially the flip side to the stripped-down blues-inflected rawk the White Stripes had by then already coined and, well, begun making a mint out of. Jack and Meg White came from the terminally recessed Motor City; Keys' guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney spent their teens in the industrial wasteland of Akron, Ohio, a city best know for supplying Detroit auto manufacturers with, ah, tires. It was a parallel too perfect to pass up; as the good folks at GM might have said, "If the steel-belted radial fits, drive it."

       But locked in the bloozy grooves of the Black Keys' first three rapidly released albums — 2002's The Big Come Up, 2003's Thickfreakness, and 2004's Rubber Factory — was an inconvenient truth that had nothing to do with carbon emissions. To keep the automotive metaphor alive for one more line, the gutbucket Black Keys were clearly driving on a different highway to hell than the schticky, if somewhat more colorful, White Stripes. If the Whites were building up to the spectacle of epic Jimmy Page guitar heroics, the Blacks, for all their grounding in the same Mississippi Delta mud that Zeppelin took off from, also had at least one foot firmly planted in the garage where amped-up ’60s psychedelia was fashioned from spare parts left over from the original British Invasion.

The Black Keys, El Camino (Nonesuch)

       Okay, so maybe that's a bit of an oversimplification. But I ain't hating on the White Stripes, so cut me some slack. Besides, along with the blues standard "Leavin' Trunk," the Black Keys actually covered one of my favorite Beatles tunes, "She Said, She Said," on The Big Come Up. Seriously, check it out. And they paid tribute to twisted Seattle garage-punks the Sonics with a wigged-out, fuzztoned version of their take on the Richard Berry classic "Have Love, Will Travel" on Thickfreakness. And. . . well, you get the point, right? I know, I know, they've also made a habit out of doing tunes by the late, great Mississippi bluesman Junior Kimbrough, but I'm pretty sure that just proves my point. As for Jack White: he had to start a whole other band, the Raconteurs, when he got the itch to play popmeister.

       Still not hating on the Stripes. But, while Jack's been playing producerman in Nashville and popping up from time to time on projects like this year's Danger Mouse-helmed faux soundtrack album Rome, Auerbach and Carney have just kept trucking along, artfully adding new sonic twists to their well-worn bag of tricks at every stop along the way. The latest, the new El Camino, was recorded after the duo relocated to Nashville, and, it's the second they've produced in collaboration with a DJ mashup master turned analog audiophile who goes by the name of Danger Mouse.

       It's almost as if, for some perverse purpose, they've embraced the whole White/Black narrative. But that's beside the point because, as ridiculous as it might be to insist that El Camino represents a major artistic breakthrough for the Black Keys — particularly after the multiple Grammy-winning breakthrough of last year's "Brothers" — that's exactly where I'm headed here. Brothers, for all its trippy trappings, found the band self-consciously revisiting their r&b roots on a road trip to Muscle Shoals. With Danger Mouse back on board, El Camino distills the very best of what's bluesy about the Black Keys, and then builds on that with plenty of keyboards by one B. Burton (a/k/a Danger Mouse), thumping basslines, a trio of female background singers, and I swear I hear some vintage E Street Band glockenspiel behind the massed vocals, chainsaw guitar, and the muscular drums of the shuffling first single, "Lonely Boy," and the raw, melodic surge of "Dead and Gone." 

       It's a bit like Auerbach, Carney, and Burton have found their way to Phil Spector's legendary "wall of sound" without sacrificing any of the grit that's defined the Black Keys since their inception. "Gold on the Ceiling" takes a riff that ZZ Top would be proud to call their own, delivers it with a little T-Rex glam swagger, and outfits it with a soulful if somewhat nonsensical chorus ("Gold on the ceiling/I ain't blind/It's just a matter of time/Before you steal it/It's alright/Ain't guarding my high"). Auerbach, who tends to go for cadence over depth when it comes to lyrics, opens "Little Black Submarine" (it's about a girl, not a boat, or maybe just a sly nod in the general direction of the Beatles) accompanying himself with a fingerpicked acoustic figure that carries just a whisper of "Stairway to Heaven," before the track begins its slow build to full-on blooze-rock bliss, replete with hammering Bonham drums and big, burly powerchords. Auerbach may even be channeling Jimmy Page in the outro solo, but he does so with a certain raw subtlety.

       Ultimately, what distinguishes El Camino is the adventurous attitude the Black Keys bring to making what, at essence, is simply really great, unpretentious rock and roll. Nothing more, and nothing less. They're rootsy without being reverent, fun without being flippant, and they achieve a certain heaviness without resorting to hard-rock cliche. That may not seem like much. But there just aren't many bands you can say that about.