Black Lips
We Did Not Know The Forest Spirit Made The Flowers Grow

It was an afternoon in 2007, April, a day in April to be precise, and I had bought a book.
Eighteen euros guys, eighteen euros, that's all I'm saying.
That morning it had rained a lot, the sky was still dark and the trees on the boulevards shone with an intense green, reflected by the water.
It was the day before Easter holidays, and for some egotistical reason, I tended to assign immense importance to every insignificant detail of my life.
Everything had meaning and poetry, the kids leaving school, the school bags, the goodbyes, the idea of seeing each other again in two weeks, the dusty bus seats and talking to others in front of the sports field fence; being bored without knowing why.

The book I had bought was "Superbad" by Ben Greenman, and the review I had read in RollingStone talked about it in an enthusiastic tone: forget Chuck Palahniuk, they said, Greenman's writings are like a ride on a roller coaster.
I had read "Choke", which I found nice, and the idea of someone eight miles high from Palahniuk couldn't help but entice me.

You want to know something? Ben Greenman is NOT a roller coaster. Okay, fine, it was funny and original, sometimes forcibly original without really concluding anything, but nothing compared to a ride on a merry-go-round at the age of seven, when the most exciting thing you've known is the Tyrannosaurus rex of Jurassic Park.
So I want to be brutally honest with you (or you reader), well, "We Did Not Know The Forest Spirit Made the Flowers Grow" by Black Lips is not like a ride on a roller coaster. But it is still a fun and original album, make no mistake.
And now I lower my gaze, below the keyboard, I stare at my shoes, uniformly black except for the toe which is dirty with mud, and I try to find the right words.

It's January 29, and if you're reading, it's because I imagine you're interested in Black Lips. And maybe you also want to know first and foremost where they were born and what their crappy life was like before all this, before we knew them, to give some sort of completeness.
But this is not my job, and I don't feel like it, and of course, Salinger was something else. Let's imagine them as adolescents halfway between the characters of Twain and Carver, these Black Lips, bored without knowing why in Atlanta, intent on doing the same things we would do when bored. Young and filthy.

For all those who met them with the beautiful "Good Bad Not Evil", they will find in this album from 2004 the same energy but recorded in a very, very different way. What they were, in short, before becoming trendy.
"Recorded with the ass", I read on rumore five years ago, about this CD. "Like the sound of a thousand toilets flushing simultaneously", this is instead the definition of the first Ramones album, according to a critic of the time, always read in RollingStone.
And from here to there, the step is short, guys the Black Lips are the Ramones of garage Rock. Pay attention, the busted sound, the philosophy (if they even have one), raw, the perennial adolescence as the main theme of many records, having brought a well-known music back to its starting points, remaining perpetually true to themselves, with all the advantages and disadvantages that may come with it.
Not to mention musical democratization, because listening to them, you can't help but think, I can do it too!

The love for a musical era: the rock'n'roll of the origins for the Ramones and the nugget brand garage for the Black Lips. Of course, I don't mean to say that the Black Lips are important because they resemble the Ramones, but sometimes certain things seem written in destiny.
I'm telling you that like them they possess that same primordial energy, spontaneous and unaware, the one that moves beneath the crashes and noise of "Mia". Guys what a piece, because it seems lifted from the repertoire of some young Wisconsin band that in 1967 wanted to imitate The Who, and they had only one single to their credit, while at the same time instead it is so characteristically a Black Lips piece. I think it's rare to be able to relate to a distant musical background, reproduce it faithfully, and still do something beautiful and original. It takes art, or talent.

Why am I so hung up on this originality and genuineness thing? Get it in your head: I'm not the Carlo Petrini of indie rock. Or alternative. Or hardcore. It's not that I'm looking for genuineness at all costs, lo-fi or purity.
I don't listen only to avant-garde Berlin groups abstractly snubbing everything else. For me, a record does not gain value because it has a certain sound, or because it was recorded in a basement. But I can't help being moved by listening to albums like these, where such beautiful and direct music is made by ordinary people, like you and me. As if to demonstrate that the impalpable beauty that permeates everything is really within everyone's reach. It's an additional hope, why deprive ourselves of it? Simple music because, as in the case of the Ramones, it's two, four chords and go. Sink or swim.

It remains certain that if you take a look at their official website, you will notice the store and the various merchandising properly for sale, but it is up to you to decide whether to wrinkle your nose or continue to appreciate them. But I realize, however, that the "paynow" sign next to the promotional photos and records for sale online, clashes a bit with their image of drunken white trashers. One could start by talking about the splendid cover and photography of Ben Crumb.
I have no idea who he is, but if he did the graphics, then he did it well. In "Notown Blues" the creaking organ sets the tempo for this drunk and complacent anthem, a slow descent. Screams and screams, the riff resumes.
"Ghetto Cross" simply doesn't appeal to me, slow and depressed, somnambulant, swayed by a jingle-jangle guitar. But above all, "Stranger". It's beautiful, with that fuzz attack. That burning guitar lasso, spinning on itself, has to do with what I was saying earlier about simplicity. "Stranger" really, listen to it.

I would almost tell you that this is the ideal album for drinking and partying with friends, but I vividly remember reading in TuttoMusica, that Avril Lavigne, well the punk queen of course, maybe she can afford it, had given the same definition to "Rape Me" by Nirvana.
I found it stupid and offensive, and from then on I started to think that no album should be ideal for drinking and partying, so I won't say it, but in this case, I think it a little. You need to listen to this album, fans and non-fans, even if some clashing sounds seem harsh to you at first.
"The paths of the heart are all winding" said Conrad, and he knew, and Cole Alexander's voice seems to come from a heart of darkness.
That of Darby crash, because you have to note the vocal similarity in several tracks. The late Eberbaugh, deceased in 2002 in a car accident, guitarist, appears in the shabby "Juvenile". "Jumpin Around" short and sick, very rhythmic, immediately leaves room for the distortions of "Super x-13".
Distortions, here's what you think of the term "Distortion"? Nirvana? Velvet Underground's Vox boxes? The Jesus and Mary Chain? And yet no, you have to think about the whistles, those of Pete Townshend, when in 1966 he brought the guitar to the amp and the audience covered their ears. Whistles and screams, then silence. Still silence and the ghost track arrives; ah you are interested in the ghost track?

I'm not.

"And it's been the ruin of many a poor boy
And God I know I'm one "

House of Rising Sun