7. Black LipsLet It Bloom
Well, Black Lips, they’re family! We grew up together. I helped record some of their second album at the Deerhunter place where we recorded all our own stuff, at Notown [studio]. I put Let It Bloom on the list because I think of all their albums, it’s the most representative. A lot of people think they’re just this party band, but there’s a lot more to them than that. I remember going to see [them] live every fucking night of the week! We’d be hanging out together, making tapes together, improvising, making noise – I mean the Black Lips were just as experimental as any other group of musicians I’ve known. If I had to compare them to another band, I’d have to compare to Swell Maps, you know? They love primitive rock & roll, and so do I. I’ve also thought Black Lips and Deerhunter were very similar, we just took it in a slightly more abstract way, and they used more of a seemingly traditional approach. This album and Cryptograms were definitely the only albums I’d say that really represent this thing that was going on in Atlanta. That was this period where the music got a little bit weird, but it was still rock & roll. There’s always been a huge experimental scene in Atlanta, but we weren’t really that either. Although the Black Lips were also involved with Eyedrum, which is this avant-garde community… it’s kind of hard for people outside of Atlanta to understand, the Black Lips were our kind of avant-garde punk band.
