I Got a Love that Keeps Me Waiting

It is a shame that rock and roll as a genre is dying out just as The Black Keys are hitting their stride with three amazing albums over the past four. Whereas others bands of the past decade have gone whiney like My Chemical Romance or anthemic like Coldplay, in hopes of breaking into the mainstream, The Black Keys less is more, blues rock routine has slowly forced the mainstream to come to them with their last album Brothers cracking the top five of the Albums chart while lead single Tighten Up dominated the rock and alternative singles charts, netted themselves three Grammys last year (they even beat out Album of the Year winner Arcade Fire for Best Alternative Album) and even nabbed themselves an MTV Video Music Award (even if the trophy actually read Black Eyed Peas).

For their latest album El Camino, The Black Keys have reteamed with Danger Mouse who produced the band’s 2008 Attack and Release and as good as The Black Keys sound when it is just the two inside the booth, Danger Mouse manages to fill the duo’s sound out and gets them more focused. It is not clear if Danger Mouse or Dan and Pat choose this direction, but most of El Camino is actually danceable. No, it is not The Rolling Stones going disco and they are definitely not jumping on the Eurotrash trend that is polluting pop radio these days but you can definitely get your groove on during tracks like Gold on the Ceiling, Money Maker, Run Right Back, Stop Stop and of course first single Lonely Boy which features a dancing security guard channeling a dance style that was someone in-between Vincent Vega and Carlton Banks.



Even with all the dancing that can be had throughout the album, the boys keep their musical styles stuck clearly in the sixties with their mix of garage rock, RnB and soul, but it when the duo skips a decade and wonders into the seventies for the arena rock of Little Black Submarines. In the middle of all these dance rock tracks, The Black Keys go full Led Zeppelin half way through the song (and are able to do it with just two people) turning a mellow acoustic tale into a rock anthem on the turn of a dime. The Black Keys better make a music video for Little Black Submarines quick just so the just resurrected other pair of rock aficionados Beavis and Butt-Head can comment on it because if anyone can bring rock music back to the masses it is the dimwitted duo who managed to turn Rob Zombie into a household name.

Song to Download – Little Black Submarines

El Camino gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.