Ten years into the game, Patrick Carney and Dan Auerbach add funk and soul to their potent blues-rock brew, with triumphant results...Of all El Camino’s many achievements, the most easily overlooked might be the fact that it exists at all. Ten years and seven albums is, after all, an impressive distance to travel on the back of The Black Keys’ consciously primitive manifesto. It’s partly a matter of providence.
To be honest, I more or less gave up on The Nectarine No 9 over the last few years of their career. Not sure why: maybe Davy Henderson’s personal interpretation of the obtuse became a bit much. Could be wrong here, because I certainly don’t know the albums well enough to pass real comment, but I suspect he strayed too far into the curmudgeonly.
There are some bands that somewhat cluelessly, from album to album, I tend to forget I like. Portland’s Blitzen Trapper probably fall into that category. I was re-reading what I wrote about their “Wild Mountain Nation” back in 2007, about how much I enjoyed it, how much I enjoyed “Field Rexx” before that, then more or less forgot about them. I have a vaguely optimistic feeling, however, that “Destroyer Of The Void” will make more of a lasting impact.
