'09: the Black Lips, 200 Million Thousand

Writing in the blogosphere can start to seem like a cut and paste affair: "I read this, I found this" Drag, Right Click, COPY, Right Click, PASTE, type three grabbing lines of information, and POST. But, that's not why I started my blog. I started the ZenLunatic to be about my taste. I want it to sound from me.

So, in an effort to make my 2009 taste-making more genuine, I have organized a format in which I will post my favorite albums of 2009. In the same vain as Aquarium Drunkards' Decade Piece, I will consistanty post my favorite albums in no particular order from now (end of November) to the end of the year. My goal is that these albums feel as happenstance of a discovery as they did when I first put the disc in my car CD player.

2009 served as a moment in my life where I was clearly starting to define my taste in music. I started ZenLunatic in March of this year , originally out of boredom and fear (to do something meant you weren't failing). So every morning, when I found myself out of work, in my sweat pants, and wired from too much coffee, I wrote about music. It started simply because. As I continued to explore and dig deeper, I found myself exposed to another universe of artists, genres, and creative possibilities. The world of music, as experienced via the web, is an energizing and hopeful place where artists communicate and survive all while remaining dreamers. I hold fast, that our likes and dislikes (opinions) are the guards to what food, what music, what art, what film, what people might come asking to take residency in the place that makes you, you. While exercising my ability to discover within the Clear Channel-less realm of music, I learned that finding what you like and don't like is the same as finding who you are. The following albums are the ZenLunatic.

=============================================================

Rambunctious.

Jumping on the bed. Cutting Class.

Fucking in the back of a car. Quitting your job.

Deviant.

You know an album and band for that matter is good when it/they make you feel proper and reserved. The Black Lips shook my universe with the release of 200 Million Thousand earlier this year. Spontaneously brash, irrational at times, but contradictory with clear musical decision making the Black Lips showed turthful this year. 200 Million Thousand likens to a more hip version of the Stones' "Exile on Main" and highlights one of 2009's biggest statements: Apathy is the new Fuck You.

The first track, "Take My Heart," showacases Cole Alexander's vocal style with his echoing howl of apathy. Energetic "woo" and guitar whale creates a flailing atmosphere of carelessness. The Black Lips channel spook and gloom in "Trapped In A Basement" with ailing vocals and a waltz that sounds confidently mad, lost inside a house with too many doors and not enough rooms. Ultimately, "The Drop I Hold" is Alexander's greatest lyrical accomplishment and the bands best mood on the album. The track is a Basketball Diary-esque love poem to a drug. The bass line drips in rhythme with Alexander's flow. The guitar's subtle twang adds to the eerie fatalist mood:

feel so lame/what a shame/smoke my brain/got no name/it's insane/what a game/pulled by the pain/will it wain?/nine times out of ten/ain't got no money/But the gods make it fuckin' rain

All of 200 Million Thousand is gripping and inspiring. It feels accessible and friendly even if it sounds conflicted. Its through the struggle that the Black Lips channel a rhythm, flow, and attitude that says "its OK not to give a shit."

Black Lips:: Take My Heart

Black Lips:: Drop I Hold

News (Making Up for Lost Time)

When people tell you to "keep your day job" they must mean stop blogging.  Breaking free for just an hour to post some things that you've may have already heard about in the past week (but this is more for me than you).  We proceed to take note on some telephone wire intercepts.

=====================================================

Beck has been blowing up news wires with his announcement of his Record Club project where he and some friends (Devandra Banhart, MGMT, Jamie Lidell, and producer Nigel Godrich) will pick an album and spend one day recording a cover of the entire thing, posting one song at a time on the internet.  Beck has chosen Velvet Underground's "Sunday Morning" off of Velvet Underground and Nico as the first item produced by this hyper drive covering factory.  Check it below.

=====

As seen in the DVD Doc of Atlanta's now verging (once hidden) music scene, We Fun, the Black Lips have a close relationship with King Khan (of King Khan and the Shrines).  Consequently, The Black Lips have joined a punkster super group with Khan and Mark Sultan (of BBQ) called the Almighty Defenders.  The group is going to release their first S/T record on September 22 on Vice Records.

=====

The American master of surrealism (films like Eraserhead, Elephant Man, Blue Velvet, Dune...) is releasing Fox Bat Strategy: A Tribute to Dave Jaurequi.  The disc contains seven tracks that feature lyrics by Lynch (sung by Fox Bat guitarist Dave Jaurequi) and music by Fox Bat.  Fox Bat were session players for Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me and "were in the 'pink room' and 'blue Frank' scenes in the film." (for you Lynch fanatics)  As quoted in the EW article, "Dave Jariqui was not a singer, he was a guitarist, a fantastic one, but I asked him to sing and speak these lyrics of mine, because I had a hunch that proved correct: he had great phrasing, and I love the grain of his voice."  The first released track (as of yet) "Shoot the Works" carries a typical Lynchian spook expressed through 50's style rock.  A great and challenging contrast when considering the 50's era was such a hum drum Golden Age of Americana purity.  Amidst the rows of manicured lawns and white picket fences of the 50's suburbs there was always the house that was "haunted."  Mid summer, dressed in your bermuda khaki shorts and white pocket t shirt, you crept up to see what brooded inside.  As you got closer, you could hear "Shoot the Works" playing from a phonograph just on the other side of the warped beach wood door.  The sound is seductive, but, unpromising.  It is your challenge and mocks your fear of adventure.  

Stream> David Lynch:: "Shoot the Works"

mp3 squeeze

Black Lips stopped by Daytrotter to cut a few tracks off of 200 Million Thousand.  The group recorded "Drugs" and "Take My Heart" along with a cover of 1960's psyche group Lollipop Shoppe's "You Must Be A Witch."

Stream> Black Lips:: Various Artists (Daytrotter session)

=====

"Lost Words" is a track off psychadelic noise pop Ganglian's Monster Head Room LP.  Light and airy, (not a bit noisy) "Lost Words" floats swaying left to right as it looses altitude every second.  It sounds a lot like a lesson learned, garnering joy from experience.

Ganglians:: Lost Words

Black Lips "The Drop I Hold" (feat. GZA)

The Black Lips' version of "The Drop I Hold" that features GZA isn't much more than the original with a spliced in verse from GZA.  Instrumentally, the song remains the same.  I saw the Black Lips live a few weeks back at the El Rey in Los Angeles and left emphatic about the band and the movement they seem to be generating.  The Black Lips create a live show that is basement punk meets psychedelic East Village loft (with projected air bubbled celluloid, that begs to ask which Punk drank the Electric Kool-Aid?).  So my love for the Black Lips will not be skewed by this track.  Cole Alexander's rhyme scheme in the original version was understandable as it related to the original dingy echo.  However, when followed by an actual rapper, it takes Alexander's flow out of its original context and into a hip hop realm.  When existing in that world Alexander's lyrics become blase (near amateur, which is not how I originally felt).  Now, the Black Lips and GZA probably weren't intending to make a rap song out of a lo-fi, twangy garage rock song, but, in the end the two hues fail to mix properly.  "The Drop I Hold" is better listened to as a form of improvised rock, than hip hop infused lo-fi.

Black Lips and GZA Remix

I'm a day late breaking this news, but, Pitchfork headlined yesterday that Black Lips and GZA collaborate on remix of Black Lips's track "Drop I Hold."  Now Pitchfork did not meet such news with enthusiasm, citing, Black Lips and GZA's performance at SXSW as "more of a mess than anyone could have possibly imagined," however, they said the recorded track is not "THAT bad."  I would urge to treat Pitchfork, like any critic periodical, with a grain of salt and decide for yourself.  The remix will be released on Drop I Hold EP through iTunes on May 5.  The EP will include album version of the song, instrumental, and video.