NME Interview
January 18 2010, 12:00am
"We're going to turn it into an echo chamber," grins Black Lips' Cole Alexander. "We're going to drop an Echoplex mic inside it and sing. We're hoping to tap into the spirit world." Col has a new toy. It's a human skull he bought on the black market in New York and we're going to get to hear it's full potential on the Atlanta rockers' next album, which they started recording in their hometown Rock N' Roll Studios, with the plan to get it out in the summer. "We're hoping the person who once lived in the skull can enhance the songs," says Cole. Well, you didn't think the firecracker-popping, phlegm-lobbing, pig's-head-on-the-side-of-the-stage-placing four-piece were just going to get a new Marshall amp or something, did you? New songs, currently in instrumental states, set for the follow-up to 2009's '200 Million Thousand' include 'Wildest Dreams', 'So Long' and 'This Is My Word'. The band say they're planning to balance pop hooks and rocky far out-ness with the deftness of a skull spinning on the end of a finger. "It's going to have three-minute pop songs," he outlines, "although we're taking them as far out as possible by doing things like using the skull. I'm hoping it'll be our most fucked up but successful album." Cole is confident that, with early progress going well and the spirits on his side, nothing can derail the album. Especially as the band have already overcome their biggest threat so far: a local thief pawning their equipment. "We found this local kid in a band had stolen a load of our stuff," Cole explains. "We called his dad and got it back. We're keeping a pedal steel of his as ransom now." - Jamie Fullerton
