There were popular singles and accolades and Grammys for Brothers. It was the band’s breakthrough, but in many ways it still feels like the setup for El Camino, the album that snuck up the following year and really catapulted these guys into the kind of rock stardom that isn’t supposed to exist anymore. It’s been three and a half years since El Camino came out, and in that time I can’t remember any letup in the persistence with which I hear “Lonely Boy” and “Gold On The Ceiling” and even “Dead And Gone” and “Little Black Submarines” (the other two, slightly-less-ubiquitous singles) constantly. I don’t even know where and how and when, they’re just the kinds of songs that have perpetually felt inextricably a part of the atmosphere since they were introduced to it. Given, the Black Keys achieving this kind of popularity isn’t necessarily what makes El Camino their best album. I know plenty of people who were into this band and can’t stand their recent iteration; I know people who hate hearing these songs again even as, somehow, they haven’t lost any of their impact for me despite their extreme overexposure.

There’s a kind of cartoonish rock ideal you could pin on the Black Keys, a reason to not take them seriously, I guess. That’s most evident in the psychedelic trappings of Turn Blue or the big glam-rock riffs of El Camino, but, you know what? This band was always a little cartoonish, it’s just that they had that cultish, lo-fi vibe to hide behind for a few records. The Black Keys have become better for embracing all the baser pleasures of rock music: this is a brisk album full of your stock rock tropes of cars and women and all that. It isn’t profound, and that’s kind of why it’s great. This is one of the most shameless, sleaziest, glitziest big rock albums in recent memory, made all the better for the fact that there isn’t a drop of irony in the Black Keys’ being. They actually have the out-of-time rock star status that backs this stuff up.

Not that it needs a whole lot of support, necessarily. The other way El Camino distinguishes itself from almost every other Black Keys release is that there is no filler, no wasted space, no meandering. These are eleven relentless tracks, written with the live setting in mind. (Presumably a packed festival crowd, where these songs do indeed flourish.) These are songs labored over with the specific intent that the hooks and riffs and little instrumental touches are as economic and deliberate as possible. Whether it’s the singles, or the way “Money Maker” and “Run Right Back” seem distantly reminiscent of early Keys material only hammered into far more memorable form, or the way the weird synth sound at the beginning of “Nova Baby” and the ’70s coke-rock riff of “Mind Eraser” are equally as catchy, El Camino doesn’t mess around. Auerbach admitted the lyrics — written after the songs were completed — are meaningless; the album title is a joke. Really, though, were the Black Keys ever a very meaningful band? This is the moment they embrace that totally, crafting a rock album that is made for mainlining endorphins. It’s not the sort of album you want a bunch of other bands to start making, but when you have someone like the Black Keys find the sweet spot in their talent and it results in something that’s as much of a mindless, mind-numbing good time as El Camino, it’s impossible to resist.