Flower Punk Party, Hey!

I’m just gonna tell you right off the bat: This band, the Black Lips, has crossed my path several times, and I still don’t know a whole hell of a lot about ‘em. I know I have an ACTUAL ceedee (the pressed plastic disc, shiny, came in a jewel box, NOT EMPEETHREEZ) but I don’t know the name of it. I’ve never listened to it. I almost did once because my best (Thee Bestest) friend Jim offhandedly mentioned that he was thinking about going to see them a few years ago, but just as he mentioned it, our pizza came and we both forgot about it because we were hungry and the pizza was awesome.

Anyway, I saw that Black Lips had this Arabia Mountain bizness coming out and after doing some quick and dirty Googling, I found out that they are from Atlanta, and that hot-diggity producer Mark (Now With Jim Jarmusch Hair) Ronson worked with them. I like Atlanta cuz its best music zine, Stomp And Stammer, runs Stripwax (YAY!) and I like Mark Ronson because I dig his sonic retrofit. Everything old eventually comes back as something new, and Ronson has a real gift for finding appropriate artists to work his brand of magic on.

Also found in my Googlings: the term “Flower Punk” is applied generously to this band by teeming masses of rock crits who obviously have never heard a Count Five elpee in their lives. Whatever.

Do you like to mix fruit juice with seven types of flavored rum and drink it out of a coconut? Or perhaps a pineapple? Do you twist? Do you frug? If yer answer is yes, yer gonna like Arabia Mountain. This elpee, larded up with hand claps, horn charts, fuzztone guitars, heavy-on-the-snare drumming, and choruses made to shout to, is a swinging party record. That is, as long as you stay away from the stinky stinkers like “You Keep On Running,” a trippy strand of noise-trash that isn’t worth the inevitable headache it’ll leave you with, or the completely directionless “Mr. Driver.” What you do not want to miss: The sweet and dirty honky-tonk bliss of “Dumpster Diving,” with its barroom piano and Glimmer Twin-Beggars Banquet chorus. This is easily my favorite track because it stands out so far away from the rest of the very good, but garage-greasy, songlist.