Black Lips
200 Million Thousand

End of the year, time to take stock of the situation.

What is worth saving in this 2009? The usual half-empty glass like in 2008?

A bit yes and a bit no. And a bit I don't know.

A bit yes because I remember few listens that struck me, and even fewer were able to stimulate both the mind and the body.

A bit no because some post '80s lo-fi rotten twists have their charm. Yes, that stuff they now call glo-fi (brrr...) or other crappy definitions. There are some interesting things to sift through.

A bit I don't know, because I admit I have listened to little of what is promoted in webzines and various magazines, mainly due to a severe lack of time.

Therefore, it happens that in the absence of adequate stimuli, one takes refuge in well-known musical shores (perhaps even too much). This is what I thought in the first months of the year after hearing the latest Black Lips. A bit like the usual reheated soup, well-seasoned, maybe a bit more pepper here, a sprig of thyme there, without the overall taste changing much.

However, I hadn't accounted for the “songs”. Yes, because if the sonic impact of the Lips is, as said, the usual (something undefined between Back From The Grave—less and less, to be honest—and a wild Texan garage sound), this time they really nailed the songs. And out of the 14 total, very few are fillers. Increasingly rare merchandise, especially in the garage sphere.

The best thing is that I've been listening to them for months now without getting bored at all (which happened with the previous album instead). Choruses and refrains that imprint themselves on the cerebral cortex without any chance of getting rid of them (“Again And Again”, “Take My Heart” the infectious “Body Combat”), with an ironic and delirious vein even more pronounced than before (the video of “Drugs” teaches this well), and some experiments outside the grain (the semi hip hop of “The Drop I Hold”, the lurching piano of “Elijah”, the almost psychedelic “I Saw God").

But I will love this album especially for a couple of teen punk anthems, going by the names of “Starting Over”, which reminds me of LA’s (?) and especially “I’ll Be With You”, stuff like the Reigning Sound acoustic version.

Don't ask me why such lavish praise, to be honest there's nothing to tear your hair out over. But given the impending baldness, perhaps it's a blessing.