Black Lips - Good Bad NotEvil

Mon 3rd Dec, 2007 in Music Reviews

If you haven’t heard about the Black Lips hype yet let me give you a rundown: Teenage friends from Atlanta form a band; play raucous rock and roll shows in their hometown and subsequently get banned from most of the venues in town; get signed to legendary label Bomp! Records ( onetime home of the Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Stooges ); guitarist and founding member Ben Eberbaugh dies in a tragic accident days before a tour in 2002; band carries on and becomes darlings of the underground garage rock scene.

Good Bad Not Evil is the fifth album by Black Lips, and their second album through Vice Records ( the previous is the live slab Los Valientes del Mundo Nuevo ).
There’s been a lot of hype regarding their live shows, as it claims spilled body fluids are a common occurrence. Rolling Stone magazine even went as far as proclaiming them “One of the best live bands in America”. Listening to this album it’s not hard to imagine why: its garage rock-infused acid-soaked vocals courtesy of Cole Alexander, jangly guitars and throbbing basslines will not seem out of place at a frat party, imminently to be broken up by police.

Opening track I Saw A Ghost (Lean), sets the pace for the album – a deliciously bluesy swagger that rumbles through with the chorus “Come on trip, come on trip, COME ON TRIP!” O Katrina! is based on the hurricane of the same name, and they ask why it has to be so mean. One of the strandout tracks on the album is It Feels Alright, a song that will instigate many drunken sweaty singalongs at teenage house parties the world over (think The Vines and The Hives).

When listening to this album its diversity becomes clear: this is a band that knows how to have a good time, they know the difference between redneck-rock and cowpoke-punk yet seamlessly fuse it together to not make it sound lame or contrived, but exciting and refreshing. Founding member’s Ben Eberbaugh untimely death is captured in How Do You Tell a Child That Someone Just Died – a narrative about little Tommy’s and little Suzy’s teacher and father passing away respectively.

With the tone set on death and destruction it’s by no means a sad album, if anything it praises living and Bad Kids sums the band up perfectly: “Bad kids, all my friends are bad kids, products of no dad kids, kids like you and me”. It becomes more apparent by the second what inspires the live shows: a yearning to break away from their shackles, a chance to be something other than an office worker or a deadbeat. This is all they have, and they’re giving it everything they have.

Good Bad Not Evil is bound to be one of the more refreshing albums you will hear this year. And as for live shows, the band is touring Australia in mid-December. Do yourself a favour and go and see them, just remember to wear a raincoat.