The Black Keys - El Camino short review

In cricket or baseball, there is usually a spot on your bat where when you can connect with the ball, you hit it out of the park. You'd usually call that the "sweet spot" and for me that's how I feel about the Black Keys, they connect with the musical sweet spot and it's a six/home run (depending on your sport of choice). There is something about their combination of riffs, melodies and blues rock crunch that resonates in your deeper musical DNA and makes perfect sense. There is nothing revelatory or miraculous about it, they just have the knack of writing songs that connect the obvious dots and because of this, even on first listen, you're fist pumping the sky. If anything this album sounds like an awesome classic rock record from the 70's that someone just rediscovered (and I don't mean classic rock in a bad way). Lonely Boy is a instant singalong hit while Little Black Submarines answers all your prayers since the White Stripes left the scene (and features the great hook "Everybody knows that a broken heart is blind"). El Camino is ultimately familiar (that bass line on Dead and Gone is a rip of something else but I can't pick it) but it moves to its own groove and kind of just rocks. And to be honest, if you just wanna rock, this the album for you. Good stuff and may be the last time I use sports analogies when writing about music.

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