The Black Lips - imagine the vile, gaudy, tit-wank myspace generation never happened: as though their 360 angle, Technicolor Skins gestation was swiftly aborted when things were as they should be: records were still, well, records, to get dusty and loved and scratched and eulogised; boys were filth and girls were purdy; Ipods were little more than a fragile white dot on a terrifying digital horizon. This is a single as it should be: a two and a half minute indecipherable, toe-taping fuzz that gleams with innocence and freshness and leaves a trail of so many other eras that nostalgia is suddenly irrelevant. ‘Cold Hands’ is a song to steal your girlfriend, steal your heart and leave a bittersweet nicotine aftertaste: reeking so deliciously of the past yet timelessly dragging it into the present. ‘Hippie hippie hooray’ is the jangling, seductive, poignant juices of Anton Newcombe’s arrogance and weirdness and spunk and rose-tinted genius bottled up with liquor and psychedelia and plants black, dusty saloon-bar kisses all over your ears. Strung-out, slurred, and so, so sexy: The Black Lips are the only sonic Ray Bans you need this summer.
Released 04/06/07 on Vice Records
