If they're lucky enough to become successful, every band reaches a point when their lives and the events in them become surreal, because they begin considering things to do with their band that previously seemed so far out of reach, they weren't even worth contemplating. At that point, the group in question has a choice to make: the band's members can either recoil and retreat to a level at which they're more comfortable operating [see the demise of New Radicals in 1999, or Nirvana's “album to scare fair weather fans away,” In Utero –ed], or embrace this new level and make it work for them. If they choose to embrace it, some of the band's stories can become fantastic as events unfold, as recent events have proven in the case of Black Lips. While currently on tour and previewing material from their forthcoming sixth album, Arabia Mountain, bassist Jared Swilley is the first to admit that the going has already begun to get weird in the best possible way for the band; in fact, that weirdness started as they got ready to record. “This record was weird coming together,” recalls Swilley of the recording process that found the band landing in several locations before the job was done. “We started out at our own studio, but we kind of scrapped that. Then we recorded some songs with Lockett Pundt of Deerhunter at their studio in Atlanta. We ended up using some of those, but then we went to L.A. to record a little bit at the studio where our third record, Let It Bloom, was done but Mark Ronson called while we were there and said he wanted to produce it and we just said, 'Fuck it! Let's do it! He's got two Grammys!' so we rented an apartment in New York for a month and did it with Ronson there. Things were going really well, but then we all got violently ill and were totally incapacitated for the last few days of the session; Mark had to be taken to the hospital, so we had to wait two weeks and we finished it up in Atlanta.”
With the knowledge of how chaotic the recording sessions for Arabia Mountain were in hand, it can only be said that Black Lips thrive on chaos as one listens to the results. For the opening rip of “Family Tree,” the band just belts forth with exactly the kind of scruffy psychedelic garage rock that won them their fan base in the first place, but with a couple of really important differences: the kind of tight delivery that comes with experience and the much-improved chops that come with having a world-class producer at the album's helm. Throughout the record, listeners will note the ever-so-slight touchings of additional instrumentation (harmonica in “Family Tree,” bowed saw in “Modern Art,” saxophone on “Mad Dog” and more) as well as a greater number of song styles than just the four-on-the-floor, in-out-and-done indie pop (“Bicentennial Man” comes pretty close to 13th Floor Elevators and “The Lie” opens with a lugubrious guitar line almost reminiscent of The Animals' “House Of The Rising Sun”) that were previously the rule on a Black Lips release. In addition, there's no avoiding the obvious care that has been taken in the making of Arabia Mountain; where once there was no way to ignore the fact that albums like Good Bad Not Evil and Let It Bloom were literally just banged out with one eye trained on the clock, listeners will be floored by the seemingly painstaking attention to producing different guitar tones to evoke different moods in each song; as a result, each one leaves listeners with a different impression and widens the scope of what anyone who has been listening since the band's self-titled 2003 debut. Because of that, only one inference is plain to make: Arabia Mountain is undeniably the Black Lips' first mature effort from every angle. “It was the longest we've ever spent recording an album, which I loved,” beams the bassist proudly. “Usually, we'll go in with ten days blocked off and just hammer the songs out but, this time, I think we were recording for about twenty-five days if you put all the time together, which is eons for us. Our first album was recorded in three days, our second was done in four or five, our third was done in seven or eight and the other one was done in about ten days so it was really cool to have that freedom. I guess, for a lot of bands, twenty-five days isn't that much but that was a huge amount of time for us. It worked out well though, because every other record we've made, there's almost always mistakes and things we want to change left in and we end up regretting it but, this time, we were able to say, 'Well, that didn't sound too good, let's go do that one again.'
“This time, we brought in a lot of new instrumentation and had a lot of conversations about getting a good tone on one particular part or another and make it sound really awesome,” continues Swilley. “We've never done that before; on all of our other recordings, everything has been analogue and everything has been organic and live, but they've always been a little bit different; we never want to do the same thing twice. The last record we did was really super-fucked up and weird because we did that in a sweltering hot, mosquito-infested studio, half naked with no playback on the machines. That was cool, but this one we wanted to do different; this was the first time we used a producer so we had some fresh ears in there, and it kept it interesting for us.
“We never stopped writing, the entire time. There were some things that we re-did with Mark Ronson, and a lot of those happened to be my songs because it took me a while to get them to where we wanted them. I wrote all my lyrics while we were in the studio with Mark – sometimes only a couple of hours before I went into the vocal booth to sing them – I think Cole [Black Lips singer/guitarist Cole Alexander –ed] did the same – and I was still writing parts as we were tracking. I liked doing that; I work good under pressure.”
Looking back at the process that yielded the album, it's impossible to miss the satisfaction that Swilley feels as he recalls the making of Arabia Mountain. While he doesn't dare say it too loudly for fear of aggravating and prompting them to turn against the band, Swilley cautiously betrays his hopes for Arabia Mountain as he looks at what the band has done with this album. It still seems like a far-off possibility, but the bassist does concede that there is the outside possibility of big things brewing behind the release of this record. “This one could definitely cross over [into the mainstream],” intimates Swilley quietly. “Don't get me wrong, I don't think it will cross over in a huge way; I don't ever see us being in the Top Ten on the Billboard charts or anything because it's still weird and subversive and sounds really awesome but I think it would be more accessible to a larger group of people, which we wanted to do. We just wanted to make the best record we could make; this one is still weird, but we have enough that are 'super-fucked up' and this one we just wanted to make 'awesome.' I will say that this is the happiest I've ever been with any recording we've ever done, and I don't have any regrets about it. Usually I don't like listening to our records right after we finish one because I hear stuff that I want to change and it really burns my ass, but this one I'm really satisfied with, finally.”
Artist:
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Download:
Black Lips – “Modern Art” – Arabia Mountain
Black Lips – “New Direction” – Arabia Mountain
Album:
Arabia Mountain comes out on June 7, 2011 via Vice Records. Pre-order it here on Amazon .
