The Gibson portion of the two Brians who make up the mighty motherfucking Lightning Bolt has a serious dayjob when he’s not terrifying children with his cello-tuned fuzz from hell bass divining rod, and Vice’s Motherboard rides around in Brian’s van talking about his work with the stoner’s favorite video game, Guitar Hero, and his own guitar heroics while he drinks coffee and melts faces off skulls.

Remember Louisville, you have two options to see these bad dudes – July 20th at Rhino’s in Bloomington and July 21st at Southgate in Newport.

Growing live is a rather spiritual, not religious, experience. It’s too loosey goosey for the rituals. I witnessed them offer a very competitive opening set for Mogwai a few years back, and though there was nothing much to watch, per se, hearing their very warm and resonating drone assault, as suffocatingly prominent as their rapid-fire fractured guitar architecture, over a 8,000 watt PA felt like marching into Mordor. Shit was powerful. Growing has, in the past, often been described as doom. I never really agreed with that. Perhaps it’s because I saw them later at a party cracking wise and crushing Rolling Rock on top of a washer/dryer unit, but mostly because their harmonically complex jam hives sound almost hopeful – vast and assuring – like trying to look over the curve of the Earth. More importantly, the one-two punch of 2008’s All the Way and this year’s Pumps, out now on Vice, will drown out such chatter with their newer directions, packing each movement with bit-decimating tremolo defibrillators and charming, delightful little monsters breathing under the surface. But this, too, is just one chapter in the group’s dynamic catalog. According to Joe Denardo, change is indeed the only constant with Growing, so to quote Wayne Campbell – “it’s not just a clever name”…

:::

Joe, what do you put on a Drone Burger?

Say again?

What toppings do you put on a Drone Burger?

Oh, ha, I don’t know. Bacon and cheese. And a sunny side egg.

Fantastic. That’s the only dumb question I have. So Pumps is a lot more glitchy and rhythmic, I think, than All the Way is. And that record is a lot more beat driven than a lot of the ambient earlier stuff. So looking into your crystal ball, is that sort of the arc that Growing is following or the general direction you guys are trying to move in?

It’s hard to say. We don’t consciously decide to move in any particular direction. But I think part of it has to do with just getting more comfortable with other machines and stuff like that. [Growing member] Kevin [Doria]’s been getting a lot more into drum programming. And then when Sadie [Laska] joined the band… we didn’t sit down and talk about it but just the nature of the kind of sounds that she’s making and how we sort of adapted to that, we sorta moved in that general direction. But I think we’ll probably want to change it up again the next time we start writing new material because we’re always wanting to try new stuff.

What do you think that direction would be?

Ya know, I don’t know, whatever keeps us interested.

Sure. That actually leads into another question I already had. I wanted to ask about how Sadie joined the band and why you decided to become a trio.

It wasn’t as conscious as it seems. We played some shows with her with another band she’s in called I.U.D. and toured around the east coast. Kevin and I could kinda see that she was into the similar sorts of processes that we are and we talked about having her jam with us sometime just for fun, and from there it just naturally morphed into her joining the band. So we asked her to do a small tour with us, then asked her what she thought when we got back home, and she wanted to stay in the group.

How does her presence change the dynamic of you all playing live or in the studio, outside the more rhythmic approach?

It gives us much more flexibility live. It takes some of the pressure off me and Kevin I think. I felt like we had to fill a lot of space and do a lot of things at once, and now that there’s three of us, there’s more room to just adapt and play off of each other a little more, instead of having something more regimented. As far as the studio, it’s a similar thing. Ya know, you got another brain in there and another set of hands and another set of ideas, which gives it all more depth and keeps it interesting.

Pumps is really dense with all these insane sounds. Are all these samples guitars or are you beginning to use other sources as well?

Kevin and Sadie sample a lot of other things like her voice and other voices and things like that – sounds they find, etc. I have a machine that’s kind of a cheap digital sort of synthesizer-y sound but I use the guitar with it, so a lot of what I make is a combination of those electronic sounds and the guitar sounds themselves, and of course the drum machine, so it’s all… we don’t have any particular rules about what we use and don’t use. Whatever we can find and whatever we like and hits in a good way, interesting way, we’ll just go with that.

Now my understanding is that you all rarely if ever use software to create a lot of the effects, is that correct?

Yeah, and then again, we’re just more comfortable with hardware. I’m not super good with computers – I’m not very savvy with them, so a lot of the effects we have are just pretty consumer grade things you can find at a music shop used or on eBay for pretty cheap, so that’s the kind of thing we’re used to – being hands on and turning the knobs and all that. We’ve never felt all that comfortable in a virtual rack effect world so we just keep it simple and physical.

Well, it doesn’t sound as good. I do both myself and have found that no program can really get, ya know, that real Big Muff sound or that actual warm analog delay or whatever… so I hear you on that.

Yeah, I think everybody’s got… I mean for us, it’s a hybrid thing. Like when we’re recording, the engineer we’re working with usually has tape and digital so we have a lot of digital recordings, and some of that helps what we can do in the studio. So we’re not anti-computer or anything, it just so happens to be something that we’re not particularly, as I said earlier, savvy with.

What is kind of the perferred Growing gear, or the gear you keep going back to time and time again? I hear a lot of samplers, like the slicer from the SP series.

We actually don’t have the slicer. I feel like that’s a newer effect. It simplified some other older stuff that’s out there. Me and Kevin both use these Korg Electribes… like the first series. He’s got the drum machine one and I have the synth one, and we both it as like a step sequencer, kinda like a trigger gate for guitars. And I haven’t used the slicer before so I don’t know, but I think the Korg offers more options than the slicer does. You can program how you want it to sequence and gate, and that can be pretty elaborate since you can go up to 64 stages and then you can also program songs that have multiple patterns involved. That’s something we’ve used in a lot in the past few records. There’s no real effects or anything like that I go back to a lot just because I want to keep everything from being too guitar sounding. Not that I’m against that, it just makes it interesting. I certainly want to keep finding new things to keep it interesting.

So I saw you guys open for Mogwai back in 2006. I haven’t seen you since though, but that was pretty brutal. From what I remember it was you two, and a bunch of big amps, and drones and, ya know, really intense guitar playing. Is the live experience in 2010 pretty similar or are you guys doing something new?

No, it’s still pretty loud and a big wall of amps. Sadie’s doing a bunch of kinda weird vocal stuff so I feel there’s more texture and dynamic to what you’re gonna hear. But it still has that kinda everything flows together vibe as one large thing that begins and ends with no real gaps.

Yeah, no banter needed.

Right.

So the Mogwai tour and the Boris tour, those made sense, but I felt like the Hot Chip billing in 2008 was kinda odd. How did that come about and did their audience react well to what you guys do?

To some degree people were into it. They have just such a huge… I feel that was the biggest tour we ever opened for, and that came about just because a couple of guys in that band were into our music and were friends – Alexis and Joe and a couple of the others. They were totally interested in our set, and visa versa. I hadn’t seen them before we played with them, and personally, I feel like I learned a lot about the way they go about their business and their lives – it’s pretty intense and professional. And a lot of their sounds are really well sculpted and put together. So, even though they may be making a different kind of music than us, I feel like there’s… we try to make sounds in a similar sort of fashion, in terms of getting interesting textures and samples together in different ways.

Yeah, that’s interesting because that’s not something I really thought about. When I saw that, I was like Hot Chip is really poppy and smooth, and Growing is very interesting and texture-oriented, but I mean, yeah, in the end, any sort of music that’s not pre-produced is gonna have some similarities.

Mmhmm. Yeah, and the only difference really is how you structure your sounds. I think that everyone that I’m interested in seeing live and that I’d like playing with are trying to find sounds in the same way. Just because people don’t structure them in the same way we do, just because they are interested in a ballad structure or a pop structure doesn’t mean that there isn’t some similarity in technique.

That makes sense. Man, you should tour with that sick Iraqi metal band that Vice made the documentary about. That would be awesome – I can’t remember their name…

Acrassicauda. Yeah, we met them once. They seemed really cool. Cool dudes.

That was an amazing film. I didn’t expect it to be, ya know, I’m not really into metal music that much, but I was wow’ed. So, I love the collage work that’s been appearing on your album art as of late and those video blips that preceded Pumps. Who’s responsible for it?

I used to do the album artwork, but on Pumps, me and Sadie worked on it. And Sadie has her own painting practice, and she does a lot of visual art. And on the video stuff, it’s about half stuff I made and half stuff Kevin made. He made the real colorful… like did a lot of stuff with the old footage of NASA and weird drug prevention program stuff. We’re all very interested in having a visual style and a visual specific. To what degree that influences the music or not is kinda not really for us to judge.

It’s a great visual compliment I think. A lot of that footage seemed to come from, are you familiar with the Prelinger Archives?

Yeah, I did find a bunch of stuff on there.

Thought I recognized some of those films. So Kevin has the Total Life project back a couple years ago on Animal Disguise I think. Is Joe ever working on a solo project like before, is that something you’ve ever considered?

Me?

You.

Doing solo stuff?

Yeah, yeah.

I’ve never thought about doing anything proper with recording or touring or anything. I feel like I have enough trouble coming up with enough stuff for Growing. But I also am trying to get some home recording capabilities going as another output, sure, but I’m going to focus on what we’re doing right now.

Well, I thought I’d ask about the possibility, ya know, see if maybe I could get the first word on something like that.

[laughs] Yeah yeah…

Any last words to the good people coming out to see you this week at Al’s?

Just looking forward to playing there again and looking forward to seeing some of our friends there.

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From here, our conversation turned more toward spitballin’ and talking about some mutual acquaintances and having met before when they rolled through a party after the Mogwai show, which was a pretty epic evening. Not necessarily the most compelling journalism at that point, but hey, I like conversation. We also talked about how much the show is going to rule this Thursday, May 13th at Al’s Bar in Lexington, with Three Legged Race and Palak. Triumphant times. Doors open at 9 p.m. More info at the venue’s MySpazz.

MP3 :::
Growing – Drone Burger
Growing – Innit

You should already be familiar with the glitchy “Hormone” and its collection of hi-fi swirling noises that resemble the moving parts of a spaceship or the inner workings of a magical chocolate factory. Therein lies the paradigm for the next 37 minutes of your life. “Massive Dropout” blossoms from fluid Atari sounds and diced rhythm, the basic soundtrack to losing two of your mans, into a soaring and sunny bliss flight. “Drone Burer,” a shoe-in candidate for best song title ever award, fashions an aquatic timbre so thick that the National Geographic Channel would really pass up an excellent opportunity for great bumper music on their next sea monsters documentary. “Highlight” wrangles the kinetic subterranean groove of grinding tectonic plates into a gorgeous substrate of good vibes. I need to listen a few more times, but I think amazing album closer/Martian club banger “Mind Eraser,”  a destructive pop ambient tour de force that resembles what people in the ’70s heard the first time they experienced Kraftwerk, features actual beats. Not rhythms constructed from chopped guitars, but actual beats. Is Growing the next, like, I dunno… Diplo? No dice – the tape-echo laden, floating samples of people screaming “in my braaain!” is probably too much of a buzzkill. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

PUMPS is the sound of pop music a couple of centuries into the future. Despite the destroyed and demented kalaidescope of sharp textures and swooping noises that provoke and startle, PUMPS is replete with the type of visceral positivity that makes it an increasingly enjoyable, intriguing, and exciting listen. If you’re not a disciple yet, now’s the time.

Growing’s PUMPS is out April 6th courtesy of Vice.

Fagen-Becker Quality Rating

MP3 :::
Growing – Drone Burger

Subterranean duo Peaking Lights are featured in the inaugural episode of Sound Builders, a new Internet series on the VICE-related video service Motherboard. As the title suggests, this Internet series examines some real DIY dudes and their craft of instrument creation and tweaking. To that end, Peaking Lights, who build nearly all their own instruments by giving life to old consumer electronics, are pretty much the best kick-off band. Enjoy!

Having been declared by the New York Times as, “The hardest working band,” front-runners of the Athens, GA scene, the Black Lips, have received their fair share of hungry press ogling these past few years. Now, with universal acclaim (minus India) and immense pressure for their new full-length 200 Million Thousand, the world seems to be calling on them to become the rock stars they’ve pretended to be since their days of high school rebellion. The result is an album that’s been appropriately steeped in paranoia before revisiting the usual themes of drug use, growing up, and of course, bromance.

200 Million manages to be their most stylistically-diverse album to date while paying homage to all their previous efforts, and I’m relieved to hear that most of the production quality remains loyally sub-par to industry standard. “I’ll Be With You,” is a goofy declaration of friendship that references the jangly end of summer vibe put forth on 2005’s Let It Bloom. One of the few occasions where they sound kinda sterile, “Short Fuse,” proves them to be self-aware of their burdening “garage revival” tag by evoking the likes of classic rock weirdos the 13th Floor Elevators. The drumming is much more succinct, and the song structure, complete with bright acoustic harmonies, is more obvious than ever. 

“Take My Heart,” stacks and swirls like fellow workhorses the Brian Jonestown Massacre if they were to spend more time surfing and less time being a psychologist’s field day. Luckily, its still scruffy as hell, and leads straight into raucous clapper, “Drugs,” one of the best songs they’ve ever written. This twisted sock-hop confidently showcases the Black Lips at the top of their game, cruising effortlessly as it assures us, “Don’t you worry sugar you got nothin’ to loose.” However, If this comes off like some sort of devious foreshadowing, that’s because it is. They’re about to stick their dirty hands in some fairly strange places.

At one point, they even pay a visit to the Casbah on “The Drop I Hold,” where semi-hip-hop drumming bounces off a freaked out reggae sample. The high-hat twitters like a Dr. Dre beat and the vocals are half-sung half-rapped, playing sarcastically confrontational until the chorus, which sounds closer to RnB than “flower-punk.” Less startling is the pounding piano romp of “Elijah,” and the existential psych-ballad of “Old Man,” but for a band that claims to be “too punk to be hippie,” they sure are riding pretty close to the quirky satire and nervous posture that characterized so much of the Summer of Love era.

But of course, they’re still tequila-soaked conquistadors at heart, and don’t mind meeting us halfway sometimes by showing their roots, even reaching back to their pre-Black Lips incarnation as The Spooks on “Trapped in a Basement,” busting out some creepy cemetery blues. And just before you accuse them of going soft, they pump a lethal injection of fuzz straight into the main vein of the “(Hidden Track),” finishing in a wonderfully cheeky explosion of sliding bass lines and bravado.

Admittedly, its a bit disheartening to find the Black Lips so self-conscious. Their gloriously belched tales of hard-knock adolescence now seem romanticized and vaguely aimed in the direction of a Born to Run for the defunct 2000’s. Which is unsettling, because the very idea of these mustache-rockers developing some sort of attack plan goes against the toppling on-the-verge-of-blacking-out aesthetic that compliments their polarizing live show so well. Perhaps they’re skeptical about trying to rise above all the buzzworthyness on momentum alone, or maybe they just want to prove that their success wasn’t some adrenal fluke; its anyone’s guess. Ah man, what a drag it is getting old.

200 Million Thousand is out now on Vice Records, and the Black Lips are currently on tour in the US.

Fagen-Becker Quality Rating

MP3 :::
Black Lips – 200 Million Thousand
Black Lips – Drugs