Black Lips - Let It Bloom

(9.5)

The Black Lips are my favorite band, putting aside the Volta/Drive-In/DeFacto creations of the great Omar Rodriguez Lopez. It's not just because their garage legends. Not because they have the best and dirtiest live shows EVER. Not because they got kicked out of India. It's because of their energy and their insanely raw sound combined with their ability to make the catchiest dirt punk of all time.

This is my favorite of their albums, and a top 10 favorite album without question. The Black Lips are a legendary garage punk band from Atlanta, the Mecca of the garage punk scene. If you want to narrow down their style, they call their music "flower punk" and I think that term accurately describes their sound. It's like happy punk, but still in a raw hardcore way, filled with catchy singalong lyrics and an overall coolness that no other band has to the extent of the Black Lips.

Let It Bloom is their most accessible and catchy album. Every song is a hit. The album opener Sea Of Blasphemy lets you know right from the start the raw energy and passion you're about it lay witness to. The bass line walks with swagger, it's my favorite Black Lips song. Can't Dance follows, which is just as good as the opener. Still so much energy, except this one is fast, really fast. It shreds. Hippie, Hippie, Hoorah is a cover of an old french song. Its an amazing ghostly sound that no other Black Lips song even comes close to sounding like. Feeling Gay sounds like a drunken haze. Fairy Stories and Dirty Hands are probably the bands happiest, most joyful songs ever, they glow and the lyrics are great. And Punk Slime is an epic western-ish song with a dirty gritty sound.

The over all sound of this album is what makes the Black Lips the most notorious garage punk band since The Sonics. It's dirty and raw. It echos and screams. Most of all, it's energy is without comparison. I saw them live for the first time last month. It was the best show I've ever been to. Crowd surfing. Moshing. Stage diving. Best show Ever because of the energy they put out.

Sounds Like

Sun drenched lo-fi flower punk