Black Lips return with a brand-new studio album, ‘Season Of The Peach’, on 19th September.
It’s been three years since Black Lips unfurled their caustic monster ‘Apocalypse Love’ – a tour de force unearthing Soviet synths, Benzedrine stupors, coup d’états, stolen valour, and the certified destruction of all things ordinary – a Lynchian dance record that set unhinged bangers against a backdrop of a black setting sun.
‘Season Of The Peach’ is a 40-minute rock and roll odyssey, tripping through DIY genres where garage rock meets new wave pop, and disgruntled country shakes hands with epic western soundtracks. The 14-track album captures the energy and spirit of early Black Lips while simultaneously applying new approaches to songwriting.
For the recording sessions of ‘Season Of The Peach’, they holed up in the bucolic surroundings of drummer Oakley’s new Sound At Manor studio in the Catskills (the first album recorded there since Oakley built the studio in 2020). In this idyllic setting, the band disconnected from city life and committed their music to analogue tape, part of their quest to embrace spontaneity and capture the energy of a live Black Lips show on record.
They also looked towards the fringes of outsider music for inspiration. “The real outliers don’t say that they’re outliers,” says Oakley. “My favourite outliers in music are those people who are trying to be normal.” Jared adds, “I always had an affinity for people who were naive in thinking they could crack into the mainstream, but weren’t aware of how off-kilter they were.” The music on ‘Season Of The Peach’ embraces that very same tension – a mania simmering just beneath the surface of pop melodies, like in the timeless, fuzzy garage rock of ‘So Far Gone’.
The album is a musical merry-go-round, a journey featuring road-weary tales from the underbelly of a lights-out America. It’s bookended by ‘The Illusion’ parts one and two: a barroom quest for hope, fear, and hate, thwarted at each turn by a sense of resignation, “you reach for the sky / but it’s an illusion.”
Elsewhere, ‘Wild One’ plays out like a Morricone romp through another day in Hell. A mantra for the hungover, a skin-crawling lament in praise of the wild at heart.
New single ‘Tippy Tongue’ sees Black Lips take on 60s girl group soul, like The Shangri-Las and Ronettes infiltrated by Jayne/Wayne County, paying homage to Buddha Records. Meanwhile, ‘Kassandra’ has a guitar sound scrubbed clean for a Sunday, chiming its way through ever-spiralling salvos like The Chocolate Watchband with Zappa on vocals. ‘Zulu Saints’ is an upbeat country honk, a good-time brush with bravado.
All in all, the band has a noble aim. “Our message has always been simple,” says Jared. “We’re just trying to rock and have a good time.” Oakley adds, “Hopefully there’s some room left for that in the world, as fucked up as it is.”
“Simply masters in their field” NME
‘Season Of The Peach’ is out 19th September. Available for pre-order in Limited Edition Solar Bleached Peach LP, Limited Edition Cream LP and CD.
Live Dates
19 Jun: The Loving Touch, Ferndale, MI, US
20 Jun: Bottom Lounge, Chicago, IL, US
21 Jun: Nelsonville Music Festival, Nelsonville, OH, US
04 Sep: Eureka, Zwolle, Netherlands
05 Sep: Patronaat, Haarlem, Netherlands
06 Sep: Misty Fields Festival, Heusden Gem Asten, Netherlands
09 Sep: Bi Nuu, Berlin, Germany
10 Sep: VoxHall, Aarhus, Denmark
11 Sep: Slaktkyrkan, Stockholm, Sweden
12 Sep: John Dee, Oslo, Norway
13 Sep: Plan B (Warehouse), Malmö, Sweden
14 Sep: Leffingeleuren Festival, Ostend, Belgium
17 Sep: Blind, İstanbul, Turkey
18 Sep: Gazarte, Athens, Greece
20 Sep: Eightball Club, Thessaloniki, Greece
