Black Lips – 200 Million Thousand

They deserve 10/10 for every album...

Let’s be honest, kids: a band that’s pissed in their own mouths live on stage really deserves to get 10/10 for every future album they release. Pipsqueak dudes in bands across the nation, get down on your knees and pray that one day you might have a pinkie’s worth of the Black Lips swagger. And the musical gold to back it up.

Following on from 2007’s brilliantly cocky ‘Good Bad Not Evil’, ‘200 Million Thousand’ has balls in the most unnatural of places, yet kicks like a bull on castration row. The Atlanta foursome haven’t stopped leaning on the grit of ‘60s psyche-garage, a sound that pioneered pretty much every guitar group you worship today. So, by championing the grainy sweatbox cool of bands like The Kinks, their fifth studio album is blood gurglingly brilliant.

While the kick drum in opener ‘Take My Heart’ gurns like a man experiencing excess stomach acid, ‘Starting Over’ is the sloppy, low-fi booze anthem that’ll have you in a headlock of cheap euphoria. Though there ain’t nothing flash in terms of production or revolutionary in sound, dripping as it is in irony ‘200 Million Thousand’ boots polished stadium rock in their miserable sold-out guts, with sleazy guitar solos (‘Short Fuse’) and short-lived leads that summon the purple carcass of John Lennon (‘The Drop I Hold’).

With the hollow decadence of The Velvet Underground and the intimidating fearlessness of the Pistols, ‘200 Milion Thousand’ is as uncomplicated as a sound can be without stumbling into utter shite; raw shag-rock anticipating your next romp and a carefree, triumphant ode to the pure brawn of rock ‘n’ roll. Black Lips are the gold tooth in a mouth of otherwise rotting teeth; a cheeky brood from with brilliantly stinking breath.

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