The Black Lips are releasing a new album titled Arabia Mountain with Vice Records on June 7. The new songs they have made available (below) seem a bit more polished than previous releases. Now don’t go and have a heart attack, or start calling them “sell outs” just yet, the cleaned up sound is definitely not a bad thing. They still rock, and sound like they are still having a blast doing it.
Shan’s original post from 01.05.2007:
Lester Bangs’ favorite song was “96 Tears” the Mysterians. John Peel’s favorite was “Teenage Kicks” by the Undertones. Both were love songs by garage bands that could barely play chords and likely couldn’t read music any better than I can. The message is clear: for the most vaunted of audiophiles, “bad” is the best kind of rock music because the whole point is that it’s supposed to sound bad to somebody, hopefully your parents and/or local law enforcement officials and church leaders. By those standards, the Atlanta group Black Lips is pretty damned good. Granted, their really-old garage sound is slightly more preening than authentic, but that seems to be purely a matter of birthdates. You don’t get the sense that they’re being anything but their goofy-ass selves when they sing about having a bad day or set off on some epic live shows of Brian-Jonestown-Massacre proportions. For that, we salute them.
I like the new tracks. I’ve always thought that if any band could use just a little polish, it was the black lips.
yeah they’re live show was sloppy and fun