THE black lips

With their white trash style pronounced through the amalgamation of gold teeth and John Holmes inspired ’taches, the four-piece from Atlanta took to the White Heat stage amidst a chasm of excitement and intrigue. As well as being hotly tipped for big things with their 60s style garage rev-up, the Black Lips have a reputation for looking like the spawn of Johnny Knoxville – and for sounding fairly good in the process. As they peppered the throng of onlookers with hits from their fifth album ‘Good Bad Not Evil’, the crowd got heavily involved as ‘O Katrina’ and ‘It Feels Alright’ energised them in a raw, sweat infested, retro sound. Ploughing through their set-list, they rarely came up for air – instead preffering to keep their foreheads perspiring and their necks nodding. True to their reputation, the band showed off a selection of their infamous party tricks, with phlegm catching and swapping plectrums for penises being the order of the day. It wasn’t the most mayhem I’d heard them inflict at a gig, but all in all just about enough for a Tuesday. On reflection the Black Lips are a decent group who look set to turn a few more heads with ‘Good Bad Not Evil’ - arguably their best album to date. With a few more gigs like this, they could go someway to showing that it’s their music, not the stunts, that will make people stand up and take notice.