Album Of The Week: The Black Keys El Camino

Album releases slow way down this time of year, and this week's Album Of The Week was mostly a two-horse race between the Black Keys' El Camino and the Roots' undun. That ends up being a pretty interesting race because the two albums work in opposite, almost opposed ways. El Camino is practically a riff-delivery system. It has no sweeping ambition or centralizing concept; its only aim is to rock your face for 38 minutes. It gets in and gets out, leaving us feeling just slightly stomped-upon. The Roots album, meanwhile, is a rap-opera parable about black-youth self-destruction that runs in reverse like Memento and ends with a Sufjan-assisted avant-orchestral multiple-movement orchestral piece. Even though it's close to the same length as El Camino, it's way more of a messy sprawl, with ideas bouncing haphazardly in every direction, and its great moments and silly overreaches are practically one and the same. The two albums' aims are completely different, and maybe if I had more time with the Roots' effort, it would've won. But this time out, I have to give the nod to the zero-pretension rock monsters. They did what they came here to do.