Black Lips: Sing in a World That's Falling Apart (CD on Fire Records)

Band: Black Lips
Label: Fire Records
Title: Sing in a World That's Falling Apart

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Band:Black Lips
Title:Sing in a World That's Falling Apart
Reviewed By:Adrian P
Date Published:17/03/2020

Label:Fire Records
Format:CD
Release Year:2020
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Although they’ve been knocking around since 1999, The Black Lips - from Atlanta, Georgia - have largely passed this listener’s ears by somehow. Freshly-partnered in a new deal with Fire Records, now seems as good a time as any to become properly acquainted.

Being the quintet’s follow-up to the skronk and roll of 2017’s sprawling swampy ‘Satan's Graffiti or God's Art?’ LP, ‘Sing in a World That's Falling Apart’ is a remarkably rousing offering, that comes dressed in all manner of country-rock threads bearing the hallmarks of a group renewed after some substantial line-up changes in recent years. While still ostensibly led by founders Cole Alexander and Jared Swilley, the album is very much a democratic ensemble affair with vocals and instrumentation swapped between all of the five current members. Recorded in a Laurel Canyon studio with an authentic all-analogue set-up, this is a collection rolled-up as an unapologetically retro yet still imaginative bundle, bound-together with some strong twisted and barbed lyrical hooks.

Thus, there are plenty of effusive echoes of the southern-fried corners in The Rolling Stones’ lifespan from ‘Sticky Fingers’ to ‘Goats Head Soup’, notably with the boisterous honky-tonking ‘Hooker Jon’ and the pedal steel ‘n’ sax splattered gospel-tinged ‘Gentleman’. Inevitably, there are affectionate - albeit scuzzed-up – nods to Gram Parsons’ work as part of The Byrds and The Flying Burrito Brothers, within the rolling and twanging ‘Chainsaw’ and ‘Georgia’. There are also flashbacks to Bob Dylan’s loosest ‘Blonde On Blonde’-era moments on the ebullient ‘Get It On Time’. Elsewhere, there are some slightly more recent reference-points explored too. Hence, ‘Angola Rodeo’ sounds like a very ragged rocking out-take from Wilco’s seminal ‘Being There’ double-album, ‘Odelia’ tips a hat to the most cow-punk parts of the X canon and ‘Holding Me Holding You’ melds early-Giant Sand stomping with ‘Hallowed Ground’-era Violent Femmes geekiness.

Whilst there are a few misfires in places (like the squalling misshapen finale of ‘Live Fast Die Show’) and a handful of occasions where the production muddiness obscures vocal clarity (especially on ‘Dishonest Man’ and ‘Locust’), for the most part ‘Sing in a World That's Falling Apart’ is a barnstorming and barn-burning-down treat.

Track Listing:

01) Hooker Jon
02) Chainsaw
03) Rumbler
04) Holding Me Holding You
05) Gentleman
06) Get It On Time
07) Angola Rodeo
08) Georgia
09) Odelia
10) Dishonest Men
11) Locust
12) Live Fast Die Slow

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Ploughing-up multiple fields of skewed country-rock, Atlanta veterans The Black Lips join up with Fire Records for this gamely-rendered studio return.

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