Do not be alarmed! Do not adjust your set! Chartburn hasn’t gone away — it’s just sharing space with some more Friday features, including the new and improved Freshly Unwrapped, in which your intrepid Chartburn panel discusses some of next week’s biggest releases today. And away we go!
David Medsker: Yuck. The singer can’t sing, and the band has no identity.
Beau Dure: After the first song, I was prepared to write a defense of R.E.M.-style jangle rock by another Georgia band. After the second song, I decided it wasn’t worth it. They veered into Nick Cave “We hate the audience — please follow us around blindly and buy shit” territory.
Dw. Dunphy: The initial word on this album seemed to be centralized on the vocals, as in, “Ugh, the vocals…” But I’m a tolerant guy and can take all sorts of musical eccentricity. Plus, the indie sites are falling all over themselves to praise Black Lips. They can’t all be wrong, can they? Hmm, maybe they can. Or maybe I’m just getting too old. I distinctly remember the stuff I listened to in high school and how all the adults branded ‘em “atonal hollering.” Now that I’ve fully confessed that I find these songs nothing more than atonal hollering, I can start boiling all my meals into easily digested soups, rewash and reuse my Baggies and go to bed at 7:00pm every night.
Black Lips, curse you. You’ve made me my grandfather.
Ted Asregadoo: Man, these songs are horrible. Under “Influences” on their MySpace page, I wonder why they didn’t list “Drunk guy singing unintelligible songs while laying in the gutter outside a dive bar”?
Jeff Giles: So this is what “flower punk” sounds like. It’s funny — without looking at a list of their influences, I’m pretty sure I’d dig whatever’s on any of the band members’ iPods, but the Black Lips themselves are close to unbearable. It’s got a slight “Velvets on meth” vibe to it, which means nine out of ten music bloggers will be typing up their reviews one-handed. “Starting Over” could be a great song if a talented band recorded it. (more…)
