Interview with Black Lips’ Jared Swilley AP Photo/Dave Martin Black Lips, this crazy psychedelic garage rock act from Atlanta, Georgia, are going to perform up the highway at The Paradise Rock Club in Boston on September 28 with Montreal punks The King Khan & BBQ Show. I had a chat with co-founder, bassist and co-vocalist of Black Lips, Jared Swilley, about the upcoming show and a bunch of other things that’ll tickle your fancy. Rob Duguay: Black Lips has a show going on at The Paradise Rock Club in Boston on the 28th. You guys have gotten notoriety for vomiting, urination, flaming guitars and even RC car races, but you’ve toned down your theatrics a bit saying that you’ve matured a little. Was there ever a breaking point that signaled to the band that you should clean up your act on stage or was it purely a personal decision? Jared Swilley: We never really did stuff like that. Sometimes it happened at shows, but we never did it every night. Cole Alexander in the band has a medical condition where he can’t control his gag reflex, but he takes medicine for that now so it doesn’t happen as much. We try not to eat too close to shows. I don’t know where the RC car thing came from, I don’t even own a car and we definitely have never had RC cars. Our shows still get pretty wild; I still don’t know what the word mature means at this point. There was never really a decision made concerning that at all. RD: Well, if Black Lips ever decide to do an RC car race on stage, please do it at the show in Boston on the 28th. Earlier this year the band put out their seventh studio album with Underneath The Rainbow. It’s been your fourth release with Vice Records, which is affiliated with the magazine of the same name and they’ve created their own media entity. How has it been working with a unique label like Vice? JS: When we started with them it had be around seven or eight years ago. At the time they were mainly the magazine and they still had the record label, but it was a lot smaller. It’s been cool seeing them blow up like they have. It definitely gives us more resources and opportunities to do things because they have offices around the globe. We do video stuff with them as well as stuff in the magazine. It’s pretty awesome to be on their label because they’re so much more than a label. RD: It must be great to be part of something that gives you avenues to go to with you having to go out of your way. It’s like they’re working for you which is pretty nice. One crazy story I read about you and Cole is that when you were both in high school you guys got kicked out in the aftermath of the Columbine Massacre in 1999 because you were regarded by the administration as being a subculture danger. Is there any truth to this story? If so, what exactly happened? JS: They started going with a zero tolerance policy in high school after it happened. We weren’t really weird at all. I hung out with cheerleaders and people on the football team and stuff like that. We were pretty well adjusted and we definitely weren’t outcasts. It was just a lot of little things they started expelling people from our class for. Stuff like skipping too much, getting caught smoking too many times, tardiness. I wouldn’t have called us a subculture danger; we were actually good kids. It’s just hard for us to follow rules, that’s why we do what we do. RD: I can imagine a school cracking down on anti-authoritative kids wouldn’t mix that well. Along with Black Lips, members of the band have been involved in numerous side projects like Diamond Rugs featuring John McCauley from Deer Tick and Hardy Morris from Dead Confederate, the Halloween- themed ghost rock band called The Spooks and more recently Cole is in a side project called Night Sun. When it comes to juggling all of these different projects, does it ever get overwhelming? JS: It’s actually pretty easy. Black Lips is our main gig and with the side projects we mostly half-ass it to be honest. We don’t try very hard. RD: Is there any reason why you guys always wanna try something different? JS: Not really, just for something to do. Just be punk. That’s what we like to do. RD: What can fans expect from Black Lips in 2015? Will any of the band’s side projects be releasing any material? Will there be another Black Lips album? Will there be a live record? JS: We pretty much live every day like there’s no tomorrow, like shit’s about to hit the fan, like hell’s about to break loose. So we’ll probably make a record, play a bunch of shows all over the world, y’know — the usual. Sunday night on September 28 will be bumpin’ at The Paradise Rock Club in Boston when Black Lips show up. Get your ticket or be square, hopefully I’ll see you there. Black Lips’ Website: www.black-lips.com Album Of The Week: Violent Sons’ Nothing As It Seems Boiling in the depths of the Providence music scene is pure intensity. Regardless of genre, nothing is sugarcoated and everything is as real as your senses tell you. A wonderful example of this trademark has to be Sean Murphy. He’s fronted hardcore punk revolutionaries Verse and lo-fi shoegaze punk act Bad Swimmers, and now this ball of poetic rage is returning to his roots. Violent Sons have a new album out titled Nothing As It Seems, and it very well could be one of the best debut albums to ever come out of The Creative Capital. It’s loud, unapologetic and angry. In other words, it’s absolutely pristine. Classic hardcore riffs crawl up your spine and feverish drums destroy everything in sight while Murphy’s vocals bring the assault again for good measure. Anti-establishment and anti-authority, Violent Sons’ new album is for the rebel in us all. It makes you want to shout and break all the chains that bind you; its songs will hit your soul and reenergize it with an adrenaline-filled battery. If you’re looking for a new awesome punk album, Nothing As It Seems is exactly what you’ve been looking for. And now it’s the wonderful time for the top tracks off of my Album Of The Week. Don’t be afraid, don’t fret, it’s purely painless. Hey, you might even learn something. The cryptic intro roaring into “Clean Boots” gets right into a furious track about entitlement and concludes with another scorcher of a riff. One that really gets me is “MK Ultra Minds,” a pro- individualist anti-war anthem all about government brainwashing and the wearing away of the human condition via war. Murphy sings about what a lot of people are afraid to talk about in this one. Another great anti-establishment anthem is “Faith Pushers,” all about living your own life and not letting anyone waving around a book tell you any different. Violent Sons will celebrate the release of Nothing As It Seems at AS220 in Providence on September 25th with Caught In A Crowd, My Fictions, and Barber Cop. If you want to bump around in a mosh pit, get a little crazy and have a lot of fun at a punk rock show, I highly suggest you go. Link to where people can buy & stream the album: http://bridge9.bandcamp.com/album/nothing-as-- it-seems Album Of The Week: Broncho’s Just Enough Hip to Be Woman If you delve deep enough, you’d be surprised how artistically and musically weird Oklahoma can get. Psychedelic dream punks The Flaming Lips started out there and The Philbrook Museum of Art, located in Tulsa, is one of the finest museums in the country. There’s also an up-and-coming rock ‘n’ roll act coming through the tumbleweeds to make a name for themselves. Groovy fuzz rockers Broncho have their new album Just Hip Enough to Be Woman currently out, and the fusion of glam and post-punk styles is impeccable. Imagine if T.Rex & The Cars had a baby who started singing like Lou Reed and Ric Ocasek and you’ll have Broncho. There’s a certain amount of pop within the distorted guitars in this album; one moment you’ll want to shake your hips on the dance floor while another will have you rocking out to a blistering solo. Just Hip Enough to Be Woman sounds like a new wave album without the cheesy synth. It’s pure rock that’s very accessible to the point that you could spin this album either to a bunch of ravers or to a crew of guys in leather jackets doing whiskey shots all night. Sometimes you wonder if a group putting out a new album deserves the hype. Broncho’s new release definitely does. Sometimes this world doesn’t make sense. It can be mind-boggling, aggravating and blissful all at the same time. To be on the more blissful side of things, open the door and walk into the top tracks off of my Album Of The Week: The single “Class Historian” is catchy as hell.