While many listeners primarily know Black Lips for their wild onstage antics, the band manifests its incredible raw energy through its music in ways far beyond just puking on stage and pissing on crowds. Underneath the Rainbow, the band’s seventh studio album, comes out on March 18 through Vice Records and serves as a reminder of the sheer creative force and commitment to making music that have been apparent since their first album, even when they could barely play their instruments. Their latest record is a brilliant achievement, featuring 12 thoughtfully crafted songs that showcase their most fully realized sound to date.
The band’s latest record follows 2011’s Arabia Mountain, the first album on which the band worked with a producer, which was none other than superstar Mark Ronson. Ronson’s effect on the album was subtle but significant. While 2007’s Good Bad Not Evil and 2009’s 200 Million Thousand proved the band could make their signature dissonance and droning more interesting by countering it with some tighter rhythms and cleaner guitar playing, Ronson was able to fine tune the garage/pop balancing act with even more precision. Arabia Mountain crystallized the band’s strengths and packed them into some of the band’s more accessible, catchier songs.
Underneath the Rainbow, which was co-produced by Black Keys drummer Patrick Carney, may take the band a step further towards a pop sensibility, but it does so while preserving the band’s strengths and without compromising its punk authenticity. This is maybe most apparent in terms of the track arrangements; the lead vocal and guitar tracks on this album aren’t quite as noisy, creating room for bass lines, harmonies, and other carefully crafted background sounds that don’t typically come to mind when you think back to Black Lips’s previous work. Layering in these additional tracks gives the album a fullness and complexity that sounds unlike anything the band has done before. Take, for example, the second track off the album, “Smiling.” With its Beatles-like backup vocals and layered harmonies, the track sounds more Smith Westerns than Black Lips, but it’s beautifully done regardless.
“Make You Mine” and “I Don’t Wanna Go Home” feature some of the most prominent bass lines of any Black Lips songs. And fans might be shocked to hear that “Funny” even includes a synth line that carries an irresistibly catchy chorus. It’s unclear exactly how much of a hand Carney had in crafting the sound of this album, but the synth certainly calls to mind some of Danger Mouse’s influence on the Keys’s 2008 album Attack & Release. As apocalyptic as these cleaner sounds might seem in the context of Black Lips’s first few albums, there’s no need to worry. The Black Lips do a great job of maintaining their authenticity as hardcore punks. Despite the catchiness of “Funny,” the song also includes the line “Come suck some milk from my titties,” harkening back to their first album, with track titles like “Everybody Loves a Cocksucker.”
In fact, much of Underneath the Rainbow‘s strength lies in its cohesive encompassing of the band’s numerous, varied strengths. Note the droning vocals and experimental sound on “Do the Vibrate” or the frenetic punk of “Dorner Party.” Every Black Lips album includes a track or two with a heavy Southern sound, and this one is no different, hitting you with twangy guitar riffs and exaggerated accents right off the bat on “Drive By Buddy.” You can also hear the Southern rock sound in the vocals and guitar playing on “Justice After All” and “Boys in the Wood,” the first single off the album and an absolutely gnarly, haunting track that’s sure to conjure your worst Deliverance-inspired nightmares.
There’s clearly some good storytelling on this track, but it also stirred the memory of an episode of Complex Magazine’s online show “The Neighborhood,” in which the band returns to their hometown of Dunwoody, Georgia and wanders around in the woods, exploring the spots where they would party and destroy or tag everything around them with graffiti.
It’s almost guaranteed that there will be Black Lips purists who cry foul given the accessibility of some of the new material on the album, but it seems like unfair criticism. That would be mistaking the evolution and maturation of the band’s sound for some kind of selling out, because everything that made the band great from its start — the raw creative energy, the experimental melodies, the heavy guitar riffs, the retro rock and Southern influences — is all still there. If being dedicated to their craft and finding ways to make their distinct sound more complex is un-punk, then so be it. Maybe if they’re willing to violate the rules of punk then Underneath the Rainbow is just more proof that the Black Lips really don’t give a shit what anyone thinks about them.
Review by Tom Thriveni. You can follow him on Twitter @tvarkeyt.
