Black Lips’ fourth album has made it to 15 years, somehow.
Reaching from well beyond their graves, two records/events still manage to fill alleys and dominate horizons in contemporary music.
The first was the release of Captain Beefheart’s creative opus Trout Mask Replica in 1969, whilst the second was the escape of Lenny Kaye’s garage rock compilation Nuggets three years later.
Both mangled perceptions of the blues, garage rock and psychedelia, creating the raw materials for punk in the process and neither’s influence has waned much since then.
Sometimes it’s more obvious than others. Black Lips are from a suburb of Atlanta but these Georgians, who once described themselves somewhat inaccurately as flower punks and are celebrated for live antics which include nakedness (almost guaranteed), drinking each other’s urine (50/50) and a chicken (when border authorities are sympathetic), are far from rednecks.
As if beamed back from Anton Levay’s groovy stereo, Good Bad Not Evil was the sound of a group finally mastering the art of falling apart – featuring everything from garage, post-Beefheartian blues, punk country, scuzz and bar-room rack and roll – and determined to engage in head-fuckery of the looniest order.
It looked for most of their career that this willful commitment to enraging everyone without prejudice would lead to their inevitable implosion, but somehow – nobody can really say why – Good Bad Not Evil is fifteen years old and the archest of arch contrarians are still making what they grinningly call music.
If their self-produced fourth album (the other three sank without trace) had a consistent theme, it was the lack of it, but so what if there’s absolutely no flow?
It clearly wasn’t meant to taken seriously AT ALL, as demonstrated by the lairy mock parental tone of singer Cole Alexander on the country piss take of How Do You Tell A Child That Someone Has Died.
Lack of empathy? Oh, Katrina (which post-dated the hurricane) concerns an unforgiving woman ‘down in New Orleans’ set to a three chord buzzsaw riff which sounds like Client attempting to squeeze The Cramps to death.
Immediately after that Veni, Vidi, Vici showed Bobby Gillespie exactly what southern fried blues should howl like, Alexander falling in and out of consciousness in the blacktop heat haze of a shimmering desert pit stop.
Peculiarly, career-wise here was a group of young men at a crossroads, although the rawness of their playing and desk work was still that of a gloriously feral beast.
Lurking beside the now much copied vintage chops there was a remarkable degree of control on display, almost as if was only meant to sound like a concrete mixer on spin with two guitars in it; Surf rock tribute Navajo and the peerlessly fucked up Lock And Key will for sure have been on Tarantino’s blood-spattered iPod.
Elsewhere, the cheery sleigh bells and hilariously camp doo-wop of Bad Kids had the bizarre result of sounding like Showadwaddy’s under the Moon Of Love with a major chip on its shoulder.
That closer Slime and Oxygen was a shambolic wall of feedback with semi-incoherent vocals was more indicative of their ability to create a scene, rather than following one.
Look, there are some extra songs on this anniversary version of Good Bad Not Evil but being honest, none of them are going to get you to change your mind about a goddamn thing. Black Lips are a force of nature you’ll either love or hate, or maybe love to hate, with no giving up of any middle ground.
They wouldn’t want it any other way.
