The Black Lips
"We Did Not Know The Forest Spirit Made The
Flowers Grow" CD
Bomp!
Records
Genres: garage rock, garage punk
Bomp
PO Box 7112
Burbank CA 91510
Sep 26 - Oct 3 2004 |
The garage rock revival scene peaked awhile ago, but few bands reached
the pure, energy-riddled pinnacle The Black Lips achieve with We
Did Not Know. The band knows how to please, and their simple
melodic charm is not overshadowed by the album's lo-fi recording
techniques and noisy style. Right off the bat, you can feel the
pure, panicked explosiveness of this quartet - and you'd have to be
made of stone not to lap it up. The Black Keys take their cue from late-60s/70s garage rock,
but infuse their noise with a distinct modern charm. "M.I.A."
and "Super X-13" make for gritty, depraved fun like nothing
else - the tunes sound like White Stripes demos imbibed with a
youthful, basement-band energy. "Stranger" and "Notown
Blues," meanwhile, could have comprised both sides of an obscure
psych 45 from 1969, and the plodding "Ghetto Cross" is
incredibly infectious, sure to catch even the most disillusioned
listeners off guard.
We Did Not Know The Forest Spirit Made The Flowers Grow
could be one of the most successful garage rock releases to come out
in a long while, not due to studio polish and major-label promotion,
but because of a true devotion to the genre. The Black Lips
actually sound like they record their music through a broken boombox
in someone's garage, and you'd have to be pretty naive not to realize
that's the whole point.
87%
Matt Shimmer [Vitals:
10 tracks + 1 hidden + video, distributed by the
label, released 2004] |
