Black Lips: 'Short Fuse'
You never quite know what you’re going to get with Black Lips, do you? Except that if it’s musical it tends to be pretty damn good. This is the band whose shows have been known to contain all manner of unprintable deeds, the band that fled India earlier this year for fear they’d be arrested for homosexual stage acts – Black Lips certainly have a mystique and a melodrama about their every action.
However, their antics wouldn’t be spoken of if their music didn’t propel them into underground sub-stardom and that it has with albums ‘Let It Bloom’ and in particular 2007’s ‘Good Bad Not Evil’ taking high order in many a ‘Best of’ list. Influences as far ranging as their travels and noises as genuinely interesting as their tales make them a band whose name is already etched into modern day rock n’ roll folklore for all the right reasons.
The trouble is when you make such albums you get such introductions as the one I’ve just written. People want more. People expect more. And so they should. On ‘Short Fuse’, the bands first single of the year, Black Lips fulfil those hopes and expectations with yet another fantastical record, crammed full of twisted guitar shaped imagery showcasing in full the bands dark, bluesy backbone. That backbone has a real hall-of-fame sound about it; the vocals sound like they’d have swam well next to Led Zeppelin whilst the guitars could’ve been taken from the Nirvana-inspired grunge era with just a little more hope to Mr Cobain’s note choice. Then you’ve got a piano thrown in for good measure – it’s really mind-boggling music, it sounds so much like it shouldn’t work, like it has no right to work, but work it does.
It’s easy to forget that this band have risen again from tales of despair – in 2002 founding member Ben Eberbaugh was killed in a head-on car collision – but you can’t really hear it in their music. Not directly at least; they’ve a resonating theme of defiance which undoubtedly has carried them beyond that shattering tragedy, but their music lets the music speak instead – full throttle psychedelica that’s just exciting to hear.
This single is Black Lips at their best; it’s up-tempo and surprisingly up-beat, not allowing the listener time to breathe out. ‘Short Fuse’ spells an encouraging introduction to their album which I’m shamefully yet to lend an ear to – on this records evidence Black Lips may yet again find themselves amongst the elite performers of 2009.
8/10
Words: Benjamin Coley
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