Good Bad, Not Evil

03/31/2008 6:00 PM, Yahoo! Music
Rob O'Connor

Atlanta’s Black Lips believe in the power of chaos. Steeped in the garage rock legacies of ‘60s practitioners like the 13th Floor Elevators and the Seeds, the Black Lips never attempt to tame their musical wild beast and send their tunes careening into the reverb-drenched abyss where their fuzzy and moldy guitar riffs are met with the pained whine of a lead singer who sounds as if he’s thrown his back out. Then for variety’s sake they join in singing in spirited unison vocals where we’ve apparently joined the party after several six packs have been consumed. In a show of maximum frustration, “O Katrina!” loathes a mean woman and the infamous hurricane simultaneously. A pedal steel is added for the “country” influenced weeper “How Do You Tell A Child That Someone Has Died?” These guys will never cut it as grief counselors, but as retro-rockers with one eye on the past and one gazing into the future, they’re effectively blurry.