Review

This album is a death trip right back to the sepia-tinged Fifties and Sixties. Though Atlanta, Georgia’s Black Lips are unquestionably revivalists, there’s nothing too contrived here. Their dark garage punk – with occasional excursions into twanging country and dirty blues – totally becomes them, though after five albums that’s to be expected. Frontman Cole Alexander has the drawl and a blunt way with words and several of the 13 short songs here are winners.

‘Navajo’ is one of the songs of the year – a salacious and totally un-PC tale of falling in love with “a little Indian girl”, the insanely catchy chorus spent pondering that she “could be Cherokee, Inuit, Etowah, Navajo / Sioux, Creek, Apache, Seminole….” Occasionally, the ramshackle production and garage band pitfall of samey songs temper the excitement, but songs like ‘Navajo’, the rollicking ‘Bad Kids’ and the actually quite touching paean to New Orleans, ‘O Katrina!’, keep the album – and the band – safe from also-ran status. They’re ploughing their own furrow alright, and they’re doing it in some style. Chris Jones

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DOWNLOAD: ‘NAVAJO’, ‘BAD KIDS’, ‘COLD HANDS’
FOR FANS OF: THE REVILLIONS, THE SONICS

Posted on: June 13, 2008