BLACK LIPS
Underneath The Rainbow (Vice)
16/20
Black Lips arrive at their seventh studio album with a run of consistently impressive records preceding it, and Underneath The Rainbow does not break the trend. At times the lo-fi production is unflinchingly filthy, and indeed the album was at one point going to be titled Labios Negros – the band’s Hispanicised title sounding suspiciously explicit and unattractively erotic.
Unsurprisingly, the psychobilly-inspired Do The Vibrate strongly implies the use of a mobile phone for masturbation. The wild ‘80s synth of Funny, meanwhile, is an unexpected, but superb addition to the flower punk palette – popping up like an estranged friend who decided to burn his disco flares and get the word ‘SHIT’ tattooed on his forehead instead. Occasionally there are whiffs of the Brian Jonestown Massacre in bluesy riffs, tonic guitar wails or Wild West chord progressions. At other times curdling pop melodies, twinkling arpeggios, and genuinely warm backing vocals are glued together by that distinctively scrappy Black Lips yelp and fumbled instrumentation. The anthemic Boys In The Wood is a clear dynamic apex and fitting centre point to the album, and it’s thereafter that the record’s most polished tracks can be found.
With 12 songs covering barely 30 minutes, though, it is the shortest Black Lips album in ten years by both runtime and tracklist, and the premature climax is somewhat apparent. The party was wild, why kick everyone out so soon? There is a saving grace, nonetheless, in the Rolling Stones-tinged closing track Dog Years, an undoubted highlight of not just this record, but of the Black Lips’ entire career.
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Words: James Balmont
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