16 December 2011 (Music Review)

Words: John Balfe

Number nine on our list of the best albums of 2011 is the most recent album to have made this prestigious list. The Black Keys' El Camino was only released at the start of December but it has already made a significant impact. The duo from Akron, Ohio, have never been more popular than they are right now and El Camino could well be the album that makes them household names.

#20 is Washed Out - Within and Without
#19 is Holy Ghost! - Holy Ghost!
#18 is Bon Iver - Bon Iver
#17 is Lisa Hannigan - Passenger
#16 is Cashier No. 9 - To The Death of Fun
#15 is Feist - Metals
#14 is Gillian Welch - The Harrow and the Harvest
#13 is Tieranniesaur - Tieranniesaur
#12 is Patrick Kelleher and his Cold Dead Hands - Golden Syrup
#11 is Laura Marling - A Creature I Don't Know
#10 is Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues
#9   is The Black Keys - El Camino

The Black Keys have walked a long path to get to this point in their careers. The two friends from Akron, Ohio, have experienced it all in their ten years in a band together, from driving 1000 miles to play in front of a dozen people in a dingy club to winning Grammy Awards in front of a TV audience of millions. El Camino, their seventh album, contains all the characteristics of their musical output up until now, but where previous album Brothers had an emphasis on soul, El Camino has a reverence for straight up rock and roll and garage punk, in all its grease-stained glory.

While early Black Keys material was stubbornly a guitar and drums combination only, lately they've welcomed bass to the fold with open arms and it has introduced a whole new dimension to their music. It's particularly prominent in songs like 'Run Right Back' and 'Dead and Gone', the latter of which even introduces a xylophone to the fold, another first for them.

The Black Keys: Stop Stop by -gaga

Auerbach's 1950s Harmony Stratotone provides the grimy backbone of El Camino, for example the now familiar riff (for Black Keys fans, at least) of first single 'Lonely Boy'. The hazy, spacious production of Danger Mouse, working on his first Black Keys album since 2008's Attack & Release, comes to the forefront in the excellent 'Money Maker'. Auerbach and Carney don't forget to nod towards their previous material either, the soulful 'Sister' would have been at home on Brothers while 'Mind Eraser' would fit easily into anything from their first few albums.

El Camino, Auerbach says, is heavily influenced by the speed rock of the likes of The Cramps and The Clash and this shows throughout, particularly on 'Hell of a Season' while 'Stop Stop' is pure garage rock, as if someone had bundled The Seeds into a time machine and brought them to the present day.

Over the course of their discography The Black Keys have slowly transformed from minimalists into multi-instrumentalists and listening to this happen over the course of seven albums has been fascinating. El Camino sounds like an aural love letter to the influences of Auerbach and Carney and it is represented here without a hint of pretension to announce a late contender for album of 2011.
  

 The judging panel consisted of: John Balfe, Nay McArdle, Elaine Buckley, Edda Fransiska Kjarval, Ciaran Savage, Barry Bracken, Ian Maleney and Patrick Conboy.