Photo by Louis Kwok. More on Flickr
The unhinged, debauched shows put on by Atlanta’s resident flower-punks – now the stuff of contemporary rock ‘n’ roll lore – are, by all accounts, not for the faint of heart. To the relief of Black Lips’ diehard STL fans, their show at the Firebird this week was certainly no exception.
The night opened with The Blind Eyes, a local trio who played surprisingly buttoned-up garage pop, more evocative of The Strokes than the psychedelic filth of Black Lips. The Box Elders followed with an act comprised of four guitar necks between two men, gratuitous kneeling guitar solos, hair-windmilling and many intensely focused feats of drumstick choreography. When Black Lips took the stage, it quickly became apparent that they would not allow their rowdy reputation to eclipse the night’s performance. The crowd – a neat cross-section of amiable misfits of every stripe – was set moshing and stage diving to the deafening, fuzzed out “Blasphemy” within seconds.
Between persistent requests to audio tech for more guitar, more drums, and more, well, everything in the monitors, the band spat, sang and swilled with abandon. At one point, rhythm guitarist Cole Alexander vomited mid-song without missing a beat. Gold-grill donning lead guitarist Ian Saint Pé demonstrated why slide guitar is often referred to as “bottleneck” by shattering his beer bottle on stage and using the jagged glass of the neck on the fret board. At times, the outrageous stage antics seemed a competition: while bassist Jared Swilley knelt upon the outstretched hands of the audience, hanging from the rafters with one hand and strumming with the other, Alexander unzipped his pants in order to play his guitar with a…less conventional body part. “Bad Kids,” the second to last song of the night, proved to be the crowd favorite. Without hesitation, a swarm of self-identified “bad kids” leapt to the stage to dance and, in the case of at least one impassioned fan, briefly tongue the face of Saint Pé. After surveying the night’s mutually high-spirited hooliganism, Black Lips credits the success of the show to the local fans. As Saint Pé professed, “we’ll have to put Saint Louis back on the map!”
