Satan's Graffiti Or God's Art?

Demented garage legends Black Lips' new record is more messy and chaotic than ever. It's a fucking mess, murky and scattershot, and as a result, their best record in years. Many different sounds throughout the record, only tied together with murk, dissonance, and a bad attitude. Sean Lennon produces, which means we get a Beatles cover and a Yoko Ono guest appearance. Much better than their bland last release.

1. (0:55) *** Short bite, saxophone swoon nighttime mood, "la la la" chant
2. (2:49) ***** Violent opening, galloping rodeo beat with stop-and-start twang with violent demented breakdowns. Screaming, elemental, discordant. Yoko Ono guest-screams, low in mix.
3. (4:52) ***** Fragile Ennio Morricone opening, into thumping anthemic snarl, heads into swamp of heavy block chords, then woozy solos, ends with muted gentle brass-- at … funeral march from across the city.
4. (3:46) * Alt-country simple song with occasional glimmer textures
5. (3:32) *** Honking midnight sax with wonderfully stupid marble-mouthed R&B shouter vox. Monotonous, samey, but wonderful mood.
6. (3:37) ******* Spring fling '50s chirping guitar (a la Shannon + Clams), sweet aching jockish harmonies lovely smarmy hooky innocent, just incredibly sweet and marvelous.
7. (3:00) ** Reverby teenage guitar, simple assertive chant
8. (0:30) ** Short field recording-ish bongo
9. (3:02) **** A real Hootenanny, thigh-slapping high energy ruckus, demented guitar and sax from all over the place, loud.
10. (4:03) **** Discordant '50s/country singalong, earnest and somewhat charmingly unpleasant. Eventually gets sweet ooh-ooh bridge with weird vocoder hijinks
11. (2:47) **** Haze of noodling jazzy instruments, bemoaning lead box just kind of welping over it all for a while
12. (4:19) ***** Heavy primary-color rock guitar, with insistent snarl that leads into heavy distortion, more electrified clipping than just fuzz. Cool sound. Even some trips to a weird woozy circus waltz.
13. (4:14) ***** Drum-machine + cool, understated verse into paranoiac freakout. Excellent mood here, spooky dirge and shooting stars everywhere
14. (3:03) **** Driving drums, disorienting bouncy tornado of guitar
15. (3:30) *** Slow, head bobbing. Cool, monotonous
16. (2:36) **** Beatles cover (It Won't Be Long), now with more wooze and menace.
17. (4:02) *** Dancing dulcimers, sweet appalachian singalong to a "bring it on home to me" rhythm.
18. (1:05) *** A short bookend to track 1. Now with smarmy lounge vox.