El Camino (The Black Keys album)
El Camino is the seventh studio album by the American rock duo the Black Keys, released on December 6, 2011, through Nonesuch Records. Co-produced by Danger Mouse and the Black Keys, it was the follow-up to the band's commercial breakthrough, Brothers, and was their third collaboration with Danger Mouse. El Camino draws from popular genres of the 1950s to the 1970s, such as rock and roll, glam rock, rockabilly, surf rock and soul. Danger Mouse contributed as a co-writer on each of the 11 songs alongside guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney.
The album was recorded from March to May 2011 in Nashville, Tennessee, at Easy Eye Sound Studio, which Auerbach opened the year prior. The band approached writing and recording differently than on previous albums, as they entered the studio without having written any material and deliberated longer on how to structure songs. After struggling to translate the slower songs from Brothers to a live setting, the band wrote more uptempo, hook-laden tracks for El Camino. The album's cover art depicts a minivan similar to one the group toured in early in their career, but in an inside joke, they named the record after the El Camino muscle car. A faux newspaper advertisement and parody car commercial playing on this joke were used to promote the record prior to release.
Lead single "Lonely Boy" became the group's highest-charting single in several countries, including the United States, Australia, and Canada. The album was acclaimed by critics and was ranked in many publications' year-end lists of the best albums of the year. It debuted at number two on the US Billboard 200 and reached the top five of the album charts in Australia, Canada, Belgium, and New Zealand. The album was certified multi-platinum in the US, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, as well as platinum in the United Kingdom, France, and Ireland. The Black Keys supported the album with the El Camino Tour, their first headlining arena tour. Four additional singles were released, including "Gold on the Ceiling" and "Little Black Submarines", which were rock radio successes. El Camino won the award for Best Rock Album at the 55th Annual Grammy Awards, while "Lonely Boy" received honors for Best Rock Performance and Best Rock Song.
Background
From 2001 to 2009, the Black Keys experienced underground success, but after the release of their critically acclaimed sixth studio album, Brothers, the group achieved a commercial breakthrough. The single "Tighten Up" was a sleeper hit on radio, eventually spending 10 weeks at number one on Billboards Alternative Songs chart in the United States and becoming their first song to enter the Billboard Hot 100. The album debuted at number three on the Billboard 200 chart and sold 1.5 million copies worldwide, including 870,000 copies in the US. The band also gained additional exposure by continuing to license their songs in popular media, making them Warner Bros. Records' most-licensed band of the year. At the 53rd Annual Grammy Awards in February 2011, the band won awards for Best Alternative Music Album and Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal.The band's sudden success proved overwhelming, as they found themselves booking additional promotional commitments and facing demand for additional touring dates. In January 2011, the group canceled concerts in Australia, New Zealand, and Europe, citing exhaustion, thus clearing out most of their touring schedule into April. Drummer Patrick Carney said, "We've been touring long enough to know when we're about to hit our breaking point." The desire to record another album soon after Brothers also led to the decision. Carney said, "We could have waited another year or so, and milked the Brothers album and kept touring, but we like bands, and our favourite bands growing up and even today, are bands that put out a lot of music and every album is different from the last."
Recording
El Camino was recorded in Nashville, Tennessee, at Easy Eye Sound Studio, which was opened by guitarist/vocalist Dan Auerbach in mid-2010 after he relocated from the group's long-time hometown of Akron, Ohio. Carney spoke of how the success of Brothers impacted the follow-up record: "For me, there were physical jitters about everything that was going on. Seeing how big the shows were getting, feeling like people were paying attention, kind of made me anxious, and I think that's part of the reason songs are so fast. I think we wanted to just muscle through it." Despite the growing expectations of the band, Carney said that the El Camino recording sessions were much more relaxed than those for Brothers, during which he had been dealing with his divorce.The band hired Danger Mouse to co-produce the record with them, based on their experience with him producing their 2008 album Attack & Release and the single "Tighten Up". Danger Mouse served as co-writer for all of the songs on El Camino. Speaking of their willingness to involve him in the songwriting process, Carney said, "It took us a long time to be able to trust somebody like that, and not be arrogant little kids about it." Auerbach said, "It was difficult at times. Some days it worked great. Some days it was just infuriating. You gotta lose any kind of insecurity. It was a totally different way of thinking for me."
Recording for El Camino began on March 3, 2011. In contrast to their previous records, the Black Keys entered the studio for their new album without having developed any new material, with the exception of the lyrics to "Little Black Submarines", which Auerbach and Danger Mouse had pre-written. Each day, the band began from scratch and in Auerbach's words, "brainstormed until we had songs and we did a song every two days or so". The material was then refined over several days, and after arrangements were agreed upon, the group quickly finished recording the songs, often in just one or two takes. Each song was recorded in a live take of guitar and drums before overdubs were added. This was done to give the music what Auerbach called "that human element, that live feel". Similarly, the group eschewed playing to a click track, despite a tendency to speed up during choruses, to keep a natural feel in the performance. "Dead and Gone" was the first song to be completed.
The band recorded using a Quad-8 mixing console that was first installed in Nashville's Creative Workshop studio in 1969 and later bought by Auerbach from a man in North Carolina. During the sessions, the band listened to playback of their progress on a speaker they purchased from Muscle Shoals Sound Studio after the last day of recording Brothers. Guitar and drums tracks were recorded in the studio's "live room", while vocals were recorded in the control room. The studio's bathrooms served as an echo chamber for recording vocals and handclaps.
For the first time, the band deliberated over the musical details of each song. Auerbach said, "we were getting into the nuances of each song by asking ourselves, 'How long should this intro be? How long should the pre-chorus be? Should there even be a pre-chorus?' We were playing with tempos and BPMs, seeing how a vocal hook does or doesn't work at a faster speed. And usually, we went with the faster option." Differing from the band's lyrics-first approach on Brothers, the lyrics for El Camino were written after the music, often being improvised at the microphone. Explaining their focus on melody, Auerbach said, "the words had to fit in this pre-existing space. It was really confining and totally different from anything I'd done before."
The sessions for El Camino lasted through May 26, 2011, and overall, the band spent 41 days recording, the longest time spent on any of their albums. Mixing and mastering were completed in mid-June.
Composition
El Camino follows the Black Keys' garage rock style but places less emphasis on blues than the group's previous records. The album instead draws more influence from other popular genres from the 1950s to the 1970s, including rock and roll, glam rock, rockabilly, surf rock and soul. Carney explained the album's direction, "After the first three or four songs were recorded, it kind of became apparent that they're all rooted in this early rock and roll feel. It was around that time that we decided to make a whole album that was built around that." The band cited several older musical acts as musical influences on the album, including the Clash, the Cramps, T. Rex, Johnny Burnette, Ramones, the Beatles, Sweet, and the Cars. Following the sonic expansion on their previous two albums, Attack & Release and Brothers, for El Camino they sought to strip-down their sound by writing an album of "efficient rock-and-roll songs and minimal instrumentation".In contrast to some of the slower, quieter tracks from Brothers, the songs on El Camino are more uptempo and employ more hooks and guitar riffs. During the tour for Brothers, the Black Keys realized that many of that album's songs were too slow to effectively translate to a live setting, leading them to write more fast-paced material for El Camino. Carney said, "This record stemmed from that, the fact that it's easier for our songs to come across well live if they are fast. So we were just trying to make a guitar rock album that was more upbeat than anything we've ever recorded." Realizing halfway through the recording sessions that all the songs they had written to that point were uptempo, the group decided to maintain the faster pace as a common thread throughout the album.
Packaging and title
The album was named after the Chevrolet El Camino, a coupé utility car. The inspiration came from the band sighting an El Camino while on tour in Canada in 2010; Carney admitted that the title was selected "as a joke". "El camino" is Spanish for "the road" or "the path". The band found out the phrase's meaning after selecting it as an album title, and they joked about the record taking on deeper meaning afterwards. Andy Gill of The Independent said of the title, "it's a nod to the pilgrimage of dues-paying, the months of one-night-stands in tiny Midwest towns which hone raw talent into rock'n'roll gold." Michael Carney, the duo's art director and Patrick's brother, was initially hesitant about the title. Patrick recounted the conversation with his brother about selecting the title and artwork:The vehicle in the cover image is a Plymouth Grand Voyager similar to the navy blue one that the group toured in for the first year and a half of their career. Commenting on the puzzled reaction the group received to putting an image of a used van on the cover of an album named for a muscle car, Michael said, "That's the reaction we were going for. It didn't work in Europe because they don't know what an El Camino is over there, so it made perfect sense to them." Patrick compared the appearance of Akron to the cover image, calling his hometown "A busted up parking lot with a busted up car." The interior sleeve booklet for the album features images of various vans from Akron, Ohio, including those produced under the brands Ford, Chevrolet, Chrysler, and Dodge. Each copy of the album bears a sticker on the exterior that says "Play loud".