Black Lips (CD)

Their 2003 debut album."The Black Lips' debut is a grimy record, something like Creedence crossed with gauze-wrapped early-'90s garagists the Mummies. The Southeast Performer remarked that "Can't Get Me Down""one of those grubby, loose, harmonica blues songs about some such "little woman"""has the production value of two boom boxes." (It also ends with depraved, cute gibberish, something like "JAY CAIN TEE TEE CAW CAW.") The key to the Lips, though, isn't just their thrown-together garage-band production values (actually, they hail from no suburban garage, but a post-high-school domicile and DIY venue near Georgia Tech named Die Slaughterhaus), or Alexander's commanding, sometimes mournful, sometimes exuberant garble. There's also the urgency, beyond posturing, one hears through the album's 13 tracks, suggesting the Lips only give a fuck about the basics: namely, being in a fuck-all band. Live, they do unremarkable shit like pulling their pants down onstage, and trying to light themselves on fire"but then they also do weirder, funner stuff: Alexander hits his guitar strings hard, reportedly with his cock, repeatedly. Ouch! Bassist and budding psychologist Jared Swilley sees it this way: "We're good-bad, not evil. A lot of club owners say they don't like us, but deep down, I think they do." - Hillary/The Village Voice"Listen to the first couple of cuts from the Black Lips' self-titled debut album and it sounds like you've uncovered yet another nuevo-garage rock band with an extra shot of punk rock attitude. All well and good, but let the album sink in and you realize these kids have a bit more up their sleeves -- the tres-wasted psychedelia of "Freakout," the creepy blues crawl of "Stone Cold" and "Down and Out," and the free-form dementia of "You're Dumb" prove these guys have been absorbing their influences from any number of less than wholesome sources. A bit like the Dwarves pre-Blood Guts & Pussy, the Black Lips are looking for something dirty, dangerous, and just plain unhealthy beneath the energetic veneer of garage punk, and on this album they don't have much trouble finding it. While the performances are often ragged to the point of near collapse, that seems to be the point much of the time, and the addled wail of singer Cole Alexander is a fine mouthpiece for this journey through the gutters of your mind. Savage and not for the squeamish, but cool stuff for folks who like their rhythm hooch in a dirty glass." - Mark Deming/All Music Guide

• Format Detail: Jewel Case
• Format: CD
• Label: Fire Records
• Genre: Rock