Black Lips defined themselves early on with riveting music that breathed new life into garage rock. So let’s just get this out of the way: 2005’s Let It Bloom is still their best album. That’s not meant as a slight to their later work, but rather an acknowledgement of just how thrilling the early, ragged material could be: the way they screamed just after the intro of “Not a Problem”; their hypnotizing, fluid cover of Jacques Dutronc’s “Hippie, Hippie, Hoorah”; the swooning, filth-caked ballad “Dirty Hands”. Everything on that LP was well-written and performed in a way that was exciting and distinctive. Before they had crowds freaking out to “Bad Kids” and “O Katrina!”, these songs anchored their shows (as captured on their great live album Los Valientes del Mundo Nuevo).
Even as they cleaned up their sound, Black Lips’ best records since have kept the same grit, glam, and grime they had at the beginning. Mark Ronson’s production on Arabia Mountain‘s “Family Tree”, for example, had a vintage, musty record store atmosphere to it, with saxophones and arrangements that made them sound like they were auditioning to be Rufus Thomas’ backing band. With Ronson, they proved that their unrefined songs could still hit with an A-list producer. So the fact that they recorded in Nashville with the Black Keys’ Patrick Carney on seven of Underneath the Rainbow’s 12 tracks isn’t something to dismiss out of hand.
But another producer is responsible for the album’s best songs. Four tracks were recorded in New York with Tom Brenneck, who worked with the band on Arabia Mountain and played guitar for Sharon Jones, Amy Winehouse, Cee-Lo Green, and others. “Smiling”, a song about spending the night in jail, is the first in a run of Brenneck-recorded highlights. It was originally intended to be about Gucci Mane, but, thankfully, Jared Swilley had the sense to to base it on his own experience behind bars. He sings about pissing in a cup, not being able to sleep because of the fluorescent lights, and sharing old Newports, and the details, when added to the song’s sunny and catchy melody, lend a grinning, toothless charm, not unlike what they exuded on “Dirty Hands”. Brenneck also oversees “Make You Mine”, the expertly crafted power pop song co-written with Mastodon’s Brent Hinds, and “Funny”, which features what are probably the album’s dumbest lyrics (“come suck some milk from my titties”) and a careeningly tenuous vocal performance from Cole Alexander. Here, the band find their old fire, juvenile as it may be.
The Carney material, by contrast, is hit and miss, to say the least. The twee romp “I Don’t Wanna Go Home”, co-written by soul singer Curtis Harding, and “Dog Years”, which was penned with Bradford Cox, are highlights. But other Carney-helmed tracks are utterly faceless, which, for a band with Black Lips’ reputation, is unacceptable. The vocals in “Dorner Party”, “Justice After All”, and “Waiting” are stiff and generic, aiming for a sort of new wave affectation that doesn’t work. Individuality has been sanded away. Since the the lyrics are uncharacteristically tepid, blame can't be solely attributed to Carney, but it is worth noting that until the Lips’ vocals come in, the stomp of “Dandelion Dust” could easily be mistaken for a Keys track.
The album’s centerpiece “Boys in the Wood”, a slow, Southern-rock-tinged song recorded with Brenneck, was the record’s first single. Heard in isolation, it didn’t work, but it sounds great in the context of Underneath the Rainbow. Coming after a dull patch, it’s a sudden injection of life, with a thoughtful and well-paced arrangement. Unlike the Steve Mackay-style sax on Arabia Mountain’s “Mad Dog”, the Budos Band’s horns on this one recall Allen Toussaint’s arrangements for the Band’s Rock of Ages—Southern rock songs emboldened by soulful brass. Counter to the album as a whole, it’s proof that Black Lips can step outside their comfort zone, craft an ambitious song, and still sound like themselves.
