Black Lips Go ‘Underneath the Rainbow’ on New Album
Atlanta rock band Black Lips are returning with their seventh studio album Underneath the Rainbow on March 18th. The 12-song set was recorded over this year in New York with the Budos Band’s Tommy Brenneck and in Nashville, with the Black Keys‘ drummer Patrick Carney. “Our main influences [this time] are pretty traditional,” bassist Jared Swilley tells Rolling Stone. “It’s roots music.”
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The band promised earlier that there’s more of a southern rock and country vibe within Rainbow, but the Black Lips‘ wild side is certainly prevelant. “Boys in the Woods” is an ode to Lynyrd Skynyrd and growing up in Atlanta that Swilley says is about “doing bathtub drugs and drinking bathtub gin.” Others were written the day they were recorded and one in particular, “Smiling,” chronicles Swilley’s brief stay in prison last year. “[That song is] about how going to jail sucks, because the florescent lights make it hard to sleep, and you have to share five cigarettes with ten other guys all ducking in a corner smoking cigarettes,” he says. “[And] how you have to call your mom to bail you out. I wanted to write a song about Gucci Mane but I ended up writing it about myself.”
Over the last 15 years, the Black Lips have remained successful due to a committed ethic to non-stop touring and a constant desire to change things up in the studio. But as they forge on, recording hasn’t become routine by any means. “I don’t think making records gets any easier,” Swilley says. “It almost seems like the first one is the easiest because you haven’t really used many ideas at that point so almost everything is new to you.”
Here is the track list for Underneath the Rainbow:
1. “Drive By Buddy”
2. “Smiling”
3. “Make You Mine”
4. “Funny”
5. “Dorner Party”
6. “Justice After All”
7. “Boys in the Wood”
8. “Waiting”
9. “Do the Vibrate”
10. “I Don’t Wanna Go Home”
11. “Dandelion Dust”
12. “Dog Years”