VICE records

Four stars

People are going to hate this band for being signed to Vice Records. This will suck for you if you're one of those people who considers themselves to be some kind of arbiter of taste who automatically eschews Black Lips because they're tarred with the hipster brush. Don't want to have fun? Don't want to hear some wilfully joyous, balls out rock and roll? Fine! Don't get this record then, and definitely don't throw it on at your next party. Rubes!

Unlike boorish, self serious throwbacks like Jet and Wolfmother, Black Lips are far from pretending to have reinvented rock, but rather gleefully admit to loving the hell out of everyone from The Gun Club, to the Byrds, Television, The Velvet Underground, The Stones and the Zombies – to name only a few references which immediately jump out of the speakers. Black Lips are much more in the Ryan Adams/Black Keys vein of brilliant homage, rather than blatant rip off. Above anything else, this record is fun.

There is a lot to love here – the effusive freshness of the production: low-fi, with just a hint of contemporary sheen. The joy in not taking yourself seriously – for the most part – while still bashing out something like "How Do You Tell A Child That Some Has Died?", a bluegrassy fable about the untimely death the band's founding guitarist Ben Eberbaugh met in a car wreck.

Maybe that sums this record up – life is short. Enjoy it. Take everything that gives you pleasure and mix it up in a southern flavoured chowder, get your friends over and have one hell of a whiskey sodden clambake. Or similar, if you don't like clams.

[Originally published in the Brag]