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[title]Black Lips stumble into town on the heels of their headlining slot on February’s bizarro “Bruise Cruise Festival.” The rowdy Atlanta natives sailed around the tropics with present tour mates Vivian Girls, a host of garage-rock peers, 400 indie kids and other innocent vacationers. The cruise is documented in music video format for the song “Go Out and Get It,” from their new album. Admittedly, it makes the trip look like a pretty killer party. Not surprising from a band that once fled India in fear of incarceration over their live antics.
The forthcoming Arabia Mountain, set to be released in early June, will be the band’s third for the recording arm of Vice Media. Mark Ronson (Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black) produced 14 of 16 tracks. It’s an uncharacteristic move for a band most associated with lo-fi recordings. And it seems to have worked. Clues to the new production sound, including well-mixed xylophones and what sounds like a theremin, can be heard on “Modern Art,” released in a music video involving a chicken and some kind of hallucinogenic squid ghost.
The punk-psych hipster darlings return to their seemingly annual mid-April visitation of Logan Square Auditorium. The venue occupies the void between a ballroom and a gymnasium, the room’s old chandeliers replaced by ceiling fans and the hardwood floors permanently scuffed. Bat-crazy, sweat-soaked frenzies will ensue, which, at first glance, may look like 300 brawling kids in a trash compactor—fists flailing and limbs pumping to the band’s boozy indie blues. Sadly, there will be no PBRs on the lido deck.