Talking to Jared Swilley about Black Lips’ upcoming release, ‘Arabia Mountain’, I couldn’t help but feel proud: This band has matured a great deal in the past decade. Swilley says that the album is the band’s best to date and that its recording re-energized the group. And although Jared can’t promise vomiting, pissing, man-kissing, or any of the band’s usual on-stage debauchery, he can promise that this music is the best thing he and his bandmates have ever done. He is not one to bullshit about albums, he mentioned publicly that he wasn’t totally proud of their previous album, ‘200 Million Thousand’.
The Black Lips were just teenagers when they formed in Atlanta in 1999: Cole Alexander on guitar and vocals; Ben Eberbaugh on lead guitar; Jared Swilley on bass; and Joe Bradley on drums. These four cut their first album in 2002, just before Eberbaugh died in a head-on collision on a Georgia highway. The band carried on, believing that Eberbaugh would want them to continue. Ian Saint Pé, the bands current guitarist, joined the group in 2004.
Their music caught everyone’s attention, starting Atlanta’s “flower punk” movement, and mixing in the sounds of blues, country, garage, and the 80s. Their performances were out of control; they gave their audiences the whole package of punk, rock & roll and controversial on-stage antics.
They took their time recording ‘Arabia Mountain’, working for the first time with an outside producer: Mark Ronson. Ronson, who has worked with Nas, Adele, and Amy Winehouse, wouldn’t have been the first guy I would have thought of for the job, but it worked out really well for the band. Their friend, Lockett Pundt of Deerhunter produced two songs on the album, which was recorded and mixed in Brooklyn and Atlanta in 2010 and 2011.
‘Arabia Mountain’ will be released in June through Vice Records. Touring behind this album, they’ll play with the Vivian Girls on the East Coast and Cerebral Ballzy on the West.
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