In fact, this snot-nosed street punk squad from Atlanta has slowly built up a cult following with an image based on the exact opposite.
Their now legendary live shows have been peppered with everything from vandalized equipment to indecent exposure to the exchanging of various bodily fluids, while their previous recording efforts were heavily indebted to an inclusive, anything-goes lo-fi aesthetic.
So it seemed like a shock of sorts when the group announced their new album ‘Arabia Mountain‘ would not only feature an outside producer for the first time, but that that producer would be none other than Mark Ronson, the Grammy Award-winning celebrity DJ best known for his retro-slick work with the likes of Amy Winehouse, Christina Aguilera, and Duran Duran.
Whereas the marriage of these two musical worlds may come across as a mismatched mess, the end result is anything but, as ‘Arabia Mountain’ proves to be the most pristine, polished, and easily accessible offering seen so far from the Black Lips. Gone is the mud-caked murk that bogged down 2009’s ‘200 Million Thousand‘, and with it so is the back-alley burn that surrounded 2007’s ‘Good Bad Not Evil‘.
This time around all the excess scuzz has been replaced with Ronson’s subtle yet signature touch; a touch that adds just the right amount of open space and extra instrumentation to give each song a spit-shined gloss that was missing from the band’s earlier output.
Now just because the Black Lips have cleaned up their sound doesn’t mean that they have cleaned up their act. The same loud-mouthed and smart-assed garage raunch that years ago earned them a deal with the venerable Bomp! Records has definitely carried over here into their fourth release with Vice. For instance, ‘Modern Art‘ is a standout psych-pop single in which bassist Jared Swilley describes taking too much ketamine at the already surreal Salvador Dali Museum in Spain, while ‘Spidey’s Curse‘ is a heartfelt ballad by guitarist Cole Alexander that may or may not be about Peter Parker’s suppressed memories of childhood molestation.
Those two are followed by ‘Mad Dog‘, a haunting sax-led ode to the backward satanic messages supposedly encrypted in early-80’s metal records, complete with a reversed rendition of Ke$ha’s ‘We R Who We R‘ buried in the mix. Then there is ‘Dumpster Dive‘, an Exile-era Rolling Stones jukebox jangle that’s about, well, dumpster diving. Each song would seem silly and insincere if they weren’t so damn catchy.
Despite it being their most pop-infused album to date, ‘Arabia Mountain’ is still chock-full of varying sound and heady experimentation. ‘Bone Marrow‘ is a demented attempt at hand-clap 50’s doo-wop that stands in stark contrast to the ‘The Lie‘, a trippy Jefferson Airplane-influenced nugget that features Alexander adding some extra spook by reverberating his guitar through an actual human skull.
For the Ramones-aping ‘Raw Meat‘, Ronson went the distance by bringing in a singing saw player, as well as recording the group using actual raw meat as added percussion, not to mention the fact that he survived a near-death hospitalization due to the band’s idea for everyone to eat liver sashimi as inspiration for the song.
To be clear, Ronson only produced nine of the sixteen tracks on the album (Deerhunter’s Lockett Pundt handled the controls on ‘Bicentennial Man‘ and ‘Go Out & Get It‘, while the Black Lips themselves managed the rest). That being said, not only do Ronson’s tunes stand out the most, but they also corral the album into a cohesive collection. This is what is most impressive about ‘Arabia Mountain’. The songs all seem to fit together as whole, not in the 70’s concept album sort of approach, but more so in the way in which the old garage compilations of the late-60’s used to meld different styles from different bands into one distinct message, as if each group of musicians were somehow collaborating simultaneously.
Only a close-knit crew like the Black Lips could pull this sort of thing off. Whether they could have pulled it off without the extra ears and ideas of Ronson (and to a lesser extent Pundt) is highly doubtful. What isn’t doubtful, however, is that this record should solidify that these four stunt-pulling trash-talkers are serious musicians, and not just serious assholes.
(Beau De Lang)
