Black Lips – Satan's Graffiti or God's Art?
Black Lips have never given a lot of fucks, but since working with Mark Ronson on 2011's criminally underrated Arabia Mountain, they've made a concerted effort to clean up their sound. And because of this there's a certain sense of falsity that pervades this album, as though even the scuzzier cuts have been carefully constructed that way, unlike the old ramshackle approach where you could practically hear the shitty equipment falling apart as they used it. It's as though they're going for the 'messy look', but they had to get up an hour early to make it just right.
As damning as that sounds, this is actually a great record, because Black Lips are the sort of band that can pull off preening and rambunctious in the same album (sometimes even in the same song). They've always loved to experiment with sounds and now they've got the backing to do it properly, so who cares if it's not as 'real' as the old stuff? What is real in music?
Freeform jazz pops up on numerous songs, We Know features a smooth electronic throughline and Crystal Night is a Spector-ish piano ballad that has been refined to its most beautifully realised core. Over eighteen sprawling tracks the band try their hand at a number of different ideas, but there is still plenty of 'classic' Lips; Occidental Front provides a cacophonous wall of noise, Wayne and Rebel Intuition demonstrate their rollicking, almost honky-tonk inclinations and Lucid Nightmare is the best high/low call and response the band have put out since Bad Kids.
There's also plenty of skittish, forgettable nonsense (another classic Lips move), and the album should definitely end on Loser's Lament – a folky number that rivals How Do You Tell a Child That Someone Has Died? for croaked-out sincerity – rather than the minute of pointless garbage that follows (Finale: Sunday Mourning). But, you gotta roll with the punches here and if you're looking at the trash, you're missing the gold.
Listen to: Squatting in Heaven, Lucid Nightmare
Buy Black Lips - Satan's Graffiti Or God's Art? on CD from Norman Records