The Electric Ballroom
Camden, London
26.05.09
Last year Black Lips came to town and took out the 100 Club with an amazing performance. It was one of the shows of 2008. They then went one better at Heaven where the bouncers couldn’t deal with their psych garage rock and definitely could not handle the crowd, the result was nothing short of complete chaos. In 2009 though the naughty foursome are back in London for their big one, a date with the London massive at the Electric Ballroom, a venue that Trail of Dead filled to the brim last month and blew the roof off.
Tonight, the Lips get the place going with the wonderful singalong tracks from their second album Good Bad Not Evil. The band ploughed through classics such as ‘O Katrina’, ‘Bad Kids’ and ‘Veni Vidi Vici‘, songs you can identify only as theirs from an album that won the hearts of so many in 2007 and the reaction is massive. But things have changed since then. Their new album is not in the same league and the songs tonight show it. Guitarist Ian Saint Pé introduces “Drugs but after reminding the crowd of the title 4 times, the reaction is poor. It’s pretty fair to say that the new songs just don’t have that same punch to them and seem to disappear somewhat. The band seemed to have picked up on this too as they struggle to find momentum until single ‘Short Fuse’ lifts the place, it’s one of the only tracks from the new 200 Million Thousand album that is slightly recognisable. Latest single I’ll Be With You is a good example as the out of tune vocals wash straight through the crowd as they head for the bar, same as the barfly blues of new track ‘Starting Over’.
The band are clearly not happy with something tonight and after a long break, they return for an encore with Cole and Jared arguing over what track to play and a guy called John on drums. Jared left the stage for Cole to deliver the b-side to their debut single ‘Stone Cold‘, which left the audience er…exactly that. It hardly made for a happy ending and left the London crowd heading for an early tube and the band looking like they were going to have a punch up! But at least with this lot you know that something is gonna happen, maybe that’s the attaction as we still love them regardless.
This show was like a game of 2 halves. The good was great, but the new wasn’t even evil. Let’s hope the next time they come to town they have a plan of attack as the ‘drugs’ certainly didn’t work this time round.
Alexander Tate