#28
Black Lips: “The Lie”
[from Arabia Mountain / Vice] 

Due to their association with Vice, my initial impressions of Black Lips always brought up feelings of Malcom McLaren’s creation of the Sex Pistols or the television executives that brought the four parts of The Monkees together. I realize that’s an entirely offensive thing to say, especially for a band that earned their stripes with deservedly well-respected indies such as Bomp! and In The Red. But until I had let Los Valientes del Mundo Nuevo rattle around in my head a few times back in 2007, I could not seem to get past that original notion.

With Arabia Mountain, Black Lips explore a tremendous amount of the different sides of their persona as a group. Over the course of seventeen tracks, the band is sensitive, shocking, sexy, gory, gothic, romantic and longing. Of all the tracks, “The Lie” provided me with an immediate burst of excitement that hasn’t faltered one bit over the hundreds of times I’ve listened to it. If there’s one song that neatly wraps up the vastness of what Black Lips represents, this is it. This one’s a killer.

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