This special tenth-anniversary edition of The Black Keys' landmark multiple Grammy Award–winning album El Camino is available in a Super Deluxe version of five LPs—including the original album remastered, a previously unreleased Live in Portland, ME concert recording, a BBC Radio 1 Zane Lowe session from 2012, a 2011 Electro-Vox session, an extensive photo book, a limited-edition poster and lithograph, and a "new car scent" air freshener—or four CDs (minus the poster and air freshener) and a three-LP Deluxe version, which includes the remastered album and the live recording. Rolling Stone hailed El Camino for bringing "raw, riffed-out power back to pop's lexicon." The Guardian said, "They sound like a band who think they've made the year's best rock 'n' roll album, probably because that's exactly what they've done."
The Black Keys released a special tenth anniversary edition of their landmark seventh studio album El Camino via Nonesuch Records on November 5, 2021. El Camino (10th Anniversary Deluxe Edition) will be available in several formats including a Super Deluxe edition of five vinyl LPs—featuring a remastered version of the original album, a previously unreleased Live in Portland, ME concert recording, a BBC Radio 1 Zane Lowe session from 2012, a 2011 Electro-Vox session, an extensive photo book, a limited-edition poster and lithograph, and a “new car scent” air freshener—or four CDs, minus the poster and air freshener. A three-LP edition, which include the remastered album and the live recording, will also be available, as well as a special fan club version of the three-LP set. The Super Deluxe version will also be available digitally. The CD set was released December 3.
The band shared a new trailer for the album, which features Derrick T. Tuggle—who was in the original “Lonely Boy” music video—reprising his role:
El Camino was produced by Danger Mouse and The Black Keys and was recorded in the band’s then-new hometown of Nashville during the spring of 2011. The Black Keys won three awards at the 55th annual Grammy Awards for El Camino—Best Rock Performance, Best Rock Song, and Best Rock Album—among other worldwide accolades. In the UK, the band was nominated for a BRIT Award (Best International Group) and an NME Award (Best International Band). The week of release, the band performed on Saturday Night Live, The Colbert Report, and the Late Show with David Letterman, and later that year, went on to perform their first Madison Square Garden show.
Rolling Stone, which featured the band on their cover around the release, hailed El Camino for bringing “raw, riffed-out power back to pop’s lexicon,” and called it “the Keys’ grandest pop gesture yet, augmenting dark-hearted fuzz blasts with sleekly sexy choruses and Seventies-glam flair.” The Guardian said, “They sound like a band who think they've made the year's best rock'n'roll album, probably because that's exactly what they've done.”
In the newly written liner notes for El Camino (10th Anniversary Deluxe Edition), David Fricke says:
The story of the Black Keys' seventh album, named after an automobile, long out of fashion and featured nowhere in the artwork, begins on a sidewalk in the middle of a blizzard. On the afternoon of January 9, 2011, singer-guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney stood on the pavement outside the Bowery Hotel in New York City, saw the weather turning vicious, looked at each other and came to the same decision: They had to get off the road.
The night before, the duo scored another first in a season getting crowded with them: The Black Keys' debut appearance on Saturday Night Live, performing "Howlin' for You" and "Tighten Up," the breakout singles from their latest release, Brothers. Two days earlier, Brothers—the Keys' first Top Five album, released in May, 2010—became their first gold record, passing a half-million in sales thanks to heavy FM rotation and a near-year of gigging, now set to run deep into 2011 including a prestige slot at Coachella and victory laps in Europe and Australia.
The Keys "tried to settle down" after cancelling the tour, Carney says. But that didn't last. "I said, 'We should just make another record.' And I asked Dan if we should get Danger Mouse"—the hip-hop and modern-rock producer, real name Brian Burton, who worked on the Keys' 2008 record, Attack and Release, and co-produced "Tighten Up." Auerbach and Carney did not have any new songs, but as the drummer notes, "Most of our records—we don't have material when we start. Brothers was made up in the studio."
In the UK, the record gave the band their first top 10 hit, and in the US it debuted at #2 on the Billboard Top 200. The band was also the #1 most played artist at Alternative and AAA radio formats for 2012 in the US. The album’s first single, “Lonely Boy”: reached #1 on the Alternative and AAA charts; it also entered the top 10 at Rock radio. The second single, “Gold on the Ceiling,” also reached #1 on Alternative radio and the third single, “Little Black Submarines,” reached the top 3 at Alternative radio.
El Camino has been certified Double Platinum in the US; Platinum in the UK, Belgium, France, Ireland, and the Netherlands; Triple Platinum in Australia and New Zealand; Quadruple Platinum in Canada; and Gold in Austria, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Mexico, Norway, Spain, and Switzerland. Of the album’s singles, "Lonely Boy" was certified Double Platinum in the US, nine-times Platinum in Canada, Triple Platinum in Australia, Platinum in New Zealand, and Gold in Denmark and the UK. "Gold on the Ceiling" was certified Platinum in the United States, Australia, and Canada. “Little Black Submarines” was certified Platinum in the United States. The Black Keys also were nominated for an MTV European Music Award in 2012.
