If there's beauty in imperfections, some of these songs are shrines. Closer 'I Saw God' takes an already near-inscrutable ode to a minor drug epiphany and manipulates it with tape-masking and censoring 'bleep' noises, before its full-band climax goes off less like a tidal wave of sound and more like someone falling over a drum riser. Some tracks are subtly weird- like the simmering breakdown of 'Drugs', where the band's voices get not so much quieter as they do smaller- and there's more full-on psychedelia on'Big Black Baby Jesus of Today', a Southern swamp shuffle drenched in toothache-inducing guitar bends and unhinged vocals. From opening track 'Take My Heart' onward, vocals are more obscured by echo, guitars play queasy, atonal leads, and the rhythm section pokes and ambles around the beat. Indeed, the cleaner sound and summery pop of Good Bad Not Evil has been ditched here for a psychedelic haze. Now on the verge of a potential breakthrough- maybe because of it, who knows- on 200 Million Thousand, Black Lips sidestep expectations and make a record less approachable than its predecessor.

But it's long past time we put the band's reputation and ridiculous press aside and look at them for who they are they're neither buffoons nor savants, and they deserve to be judged on their music, which was plenty maniacal without taking any outside factors into consideration. Whatever you like to call the Black Lips' particular branch of guitar rock- garage, revival, their own 'flower punk' tag- it's an easier sell whenever the band in question is painted the fastest, craziest, or most depraved in the land.

Black lips 200 million thousand rar