In a 2012 interview with Pitchfork Media, garage rocker Ty Segall expressed worry about the current state of the music world: “All these kids who are growing up on Skrillex and all this digital music — what are they gonna think when they hear rock ’n’ roll?” DIY thoroughbreds and dubstep skeptics everywhere rejoiced, for Ty Segall had arrived, axe in hand, to save rock and roll. Only one problem, though: if Ty Segall is the savior of rock and roll, he’s the third or fourth one to have come along.
One need look no further than the (somewhat reductionist) VH1/Rolling Stone school of thought. In short, punk rock saved the ‘70s and ‘80s, Nirvana saved the ‘90s, and the garage-rock revival saved the ‘00s. That last revolution was characterized by ‘60s-style band names like the White Stripes, the Strokes, and the Hives. There was one notable band to emerge during the garage-rock revival whose name didn’t feature a definite article, though: Black Lips.
Black Lips, along with their contemporaries, were praised for their stripped-down instrumentation and unpolished aesthetic. After grunge had inadvertently transformed into overwrought nu metal, meat-and-potatoes rock was a much needed to return to form, but a return nonetheless. Because the garage-rock revival relied so heavily on mining the sounds of past generations, most of the relevant bands have since either outgrown their Lou Reed-ian minimalism or broken up. Black Lips, however, have plowed on uninhibited. “Underneath is the Rainbow,” the band’s seventh full-length album, is a tiring listen that doesn’t add anything new to their extensive discography.
The album opens with the honky-tonk number “Drive-By Buddy.” The song sounds like it easily could have been recorded by a weekend-warrior bar band, right down to the lethargic guitar solo. The lopsided boogaloo “Funny” is straight cheese that approaches self-parody when, at 2 minutes in, everything drops out except for the vocals, drums, and a synthesizer that sounds like it needs new batteries. Black Lips have never taken themselves too seriously, but here they practically sound like they’ve admitted defeat — their music isn’t cool anymore, so why try any harder?
“Underneath the Rainbow” is all form with no substance. Every song expertly copies a specific style or era of rock music, but once you get past the novelty, the songs are quickly forgettable. Take “Dorner Party,” for instance: it could easily be an unreleased Ramones or Buzzcocks song, but only one for which it’s clear why it was never released. On previous Black Lips albums, you’d at least find a good hook here and there; on “Underneath the Rainbow,” you get “I Don’t Wanna Go Home,” in which the refrain is a two-note whistling riff.
Black Lips’ lyrics have never really consisted of anything more than irreverent teenaged outbursts and blatant innuendos. On “Rainbow,” though, the lyrics are worse than ever, content to sound ambiguously rebellious. It’s hard to take the band seriously on songs like the vaguely political “Waiting”: “I’m ridin’ down the interstate, movin’ faster if I can / I’m tryin’ not to instigate any problems with the man.”
Single “Boys in the Wood” sounds like it involved a bit more effort than the rest of the album. It’s got subtle touches that we’ve never really heard before in a Black Lips song: a faint organ in the background and a horn section in the refrain. You’d think the song would actually make a statement of some sort, but a closer look at the lyrics reveals little more than a collection of meaningless phrases revolving around boys, drinking, and woods.
Frank Zappa once said, “jazz isn’t dead, it just smells funny.” Black Lips could benefit from the same advice regarding rock and roll. From Tame Impala to St. Vincent, there are plenty of contemporary artists creating interesting, original music that could still be loosely defined as rock. Black Lips, meanwhile, have already pronounced rock ‘n’ roll dead — and thrown it a resoundingly boring funeral.
