Sick Of Your Dancing Black Lips

As if I wasn't going to love this 7" - ever since coming over to the Dark Side of Black Lips, I've enjoyed everything they've laid their sticky palms on. This one offers two cutting room floor tracks from the Arabia Mountain sessions. I'm a bigger fan of the B-side 'Dance With You', but it's all good, shambolic fun as always. Out on Vice Records, I'm led to believe it's already sold out, so scour your local record stores for this one.

Black Lips - Sick Of You
Black Lips - Dance With You

School Knights

Those snotty slackos School Knights have a couple new tunes floating around the ether. After the disappointing news that the fucking rad SK/Night Manager split isn't likely to materialise, it's good to hear these guys are still throwing their shit at their teenage bedroom walls. Take that, MOM! Yeah, these two tracks in particular play the Wavves card, but when the flat-brim cap fits... It's goddamn catchy, a veritable KFC bucketload of fun, plus it's a bit meatier - the duo of Michael Stein and Zack Roif are now a foursome, thanks to Morris Kolontyrsky and Ben Donehower! Radness! And it is honed (as much as this shit can be honed) with some ace tours last year opposite Ty Segall, Black Lips, Cloud Nothings, Vivian Girls and Gauntlet Hair. Yeah, I just came a little too...

School Knights - Present Tense
School Knights - Bender

Backwards Looking Forward - Acid Kicks/Different Skeletons

Another couple releases that should have been at the forefront of your minds before you were lobotomised by Watch The Throne last year...


Acid Kicks are a Philly quartet (three of which play bass, and seeing as I have a distant connection to that instrument I am already enamoured) who put out this EP Life Dreams last year. I have had it floating around for months, and thought that seeing as it plays with me a bit, it should play with you too. It's the typical psych fare that I lap up like alcoholic milkshakes, yet there is a sweaty urgency underneath it all that shakes and rattles the bones. Noisy psych punk with a severe bottom end. Buy the 7" here.


Acid Kicks - Pyramidic Valley


Different Skeletons are a garage rock band from Canada's largest city, Toronto. Their album of last year Secret Jeers was one sloppy, jangly, irreverent jam, Black Lips and the Dirtbombs would be proud.Different Skeletons are delightfully jangled, chanting, and surf-tinged. For all the same reasons I recommended the Bleed Whites I can suggest these guys, especially if you're looking for something quicker and rougher. All and all, a sweet debut album. Plus, it has a great cover (see below) AND is a free download here! Imminently cooler.

Different Skeletons - All Going To Die
Different Skeletons - Samsonite

Blacken Those Princely Lips

Two great shows on tonight kids. Firstly there is the Bonnie Prince Billy show at GoMA for the Matisse Up Late program. Expect some exceptional music coupled with heaps of dicks talking and "being seen". Its a pity that there will be that kind of crowd, but what can you do?

Bonnie Prince Billy - I See A Darkness


Go see Black Lips, that's what you can do! The garage behemoths are bringing their incendiary show to The Zoo, with great support from Tiny Migrants and Cannon (go the Long Gone collective!) This will be the raucous drunkfest that you always dreamed of. And to tie the two shows together in a tenuous fashion...

Black Lips - Modern Art

Beeting On The True Widow

Both of these tracks came up a while ago on the blog merry-go-round - in fact I have so many posts backlogged from past releases they are starting to grow mould - but I couldn't let them slide by, nor could I decide which one to write about to close out this balmy Thursday, so I'm hitting you with both barrels!


First up, it's well known now that I have begun a love affair with Captured Tracks favoured Queens trio The Beets. I love their silly cartoon cover art, their blase attitude, their slacker malaise wrapped up in Black Lips Halloween garb. They released an album at the beginning of the year - Staying Home - which I thought was a lot of fun. Now they are releasing another album called Let The Poison Out (this time finding its home on Hardly Art, still with the cover art though!). I have already gushed over first track from it 'Doing As I Do', but here is another. I'm yet to get my mitts on the LP, although when searching for it down at my local record store (which, after a huge closing down sale and the requisite mass protest, fevered vinyl purchases and gnashing of teeth, is still inexplicably open) I found their first album, Spit In The Face Of People Who Don't Want To Be Cool, so it still kinda worked out for me.

The Beets - Friends Of Friends
The Beets - Doing As I Do


I am a massive fan of True Widow, and their debut album slays me. So when I heard that they already had some new releases coming our way, I was more than stoked. I.N.O is in fact a mixed bag of both leftovers from their impossibly long monikered LP As High As The Highest Heavens And From The Center To The Circumference Of The Earth and brand newies, such as the track 'Bathyscaphe' below. Apart from the title that is at the other end of the length spectrum, it is droning beauty as usual from these Texans. Which means it's crazy good.

True Widow - Bathyscaphe
True Widow - Skull Eyes

NOW do you see why I've included both? Good! Now I'm off to the airport. I will be predisposed for the next few days - not seeing your girlfriend for ten months means there is some catching up to do - but I'm not leaving you hanging! Expect posts about Luke Roberts, Blasted Canyons, a Friday Cover Up, our next Hits From The Box and more!

Mark's Sultanic Mish Mash, Whatever And Whenever He Wants It

Mark Sultan does like to rub people up the wrong way. That said, Ive spoken to the guy a few times and found him to be an ace dude. Fair dues. The fact is, he has been thrashing the garage flag here, there and everywhere for a very long time, and is consistently producing top-shelf stuff. He is releasing two albums, titled Whatever I Want and Whenever I Want respectively. Both will come out on vinyl on In The Red Records. However, you can get a conglomeration of both albums in one package called Whatever/Whenever. Its got 7 tracks from each album, so it's basically a sampler. Really, it is good. But you need to get the albums and hear the 12 other tracks left behind! There are some Bobby Darin/Buddy Holly ghost harbouring on there, alongside many other rad touchstones, and if that sounds exciting (which it fucking should), invest. It covers every gamut of rock music, has collabs from members of Black Lips and The Spits, and promises to be seven shades of brown awesomeness.

Mark Sultan - Let Me Freeze
Mark Sultan - Axis Abraxas
Mark Sultan - Sing In Grey

Flippin' Through Some Old School Charts

Let's start afresh, shall we? Its been a few days since we posted, I apologise. So let's get reacquainted over a new band that revels in the old school house of rock, shall we?

Charts are from Portland, a rock trio that love their rock pretty olde. And their EP Birds And Bees is as indebted to Buddy Holly and the Modern Lovers as it is to Thee Oh Sees; to Eddie Cochran as it is to Black Lips; to to Arthur Lee as it is to The Dirtbombs. This is moreso a garage rock revival sound than most of the current movement, and is refreshing because of this. Six slices of 60s inflected chugging rock n roll - its a hell of a lot of fun, I highly recommend it!

Grab Birds And Bees here.

Charts - The Birds & The Bees
Charts - Slow Down Tiger

There's No Beatin The Beets

The Beets are doing what they do, as is brilliantly essayed in cleverly-titled track 'Doing As I Do.' They are in that Black Lips realm, but a little poppier, thus at times a little nicer - and better than Smith Westerns in almost every way. Still funny kids though, and can totally acoustic the fuck out of their vibe. Let The Poison Out (out on new label Hardly Art) promises to be as good as Stay Home, their album from earlier this year on Captured Tracks. Yep, two Beets albums in 2011. Its good to be alive.

The Beets - Doing As I Do