Black Lips aboard the Liberty Belle Riverboat

Cole Alexander and Zumi Rosow

Guitarist Cole Alexander and bassist Jared Swilley were expelled during their senior year in high school in Dunwoody, Georgia; they had developed a reputation for crude antics and after the Columbine Massacre in 1999 the school authorities regarded the duo as a "subculture danger." That same year, they left a local band, Renegades, to form the garage band they would call Black Lips. Now the duo found stages and audiences for their music and their antics. Performances included not only a rough musical pastiche of blues, rock, doo-wop, country, and punk, but also vomiting (Alexander's medical condition), urination, nudity, electric radio-controlled car races, fireworks, a chicken, flaming guitars and other unpredictable events. Black Lips' eighth and most recent album, Satan's Graffiti or God’s Art?, was released on May 5, 2017. The band presently consists of Alexander, Swilley, saxophonist Zumi Rosow, drummer Oakley Munson and new guitarist Jeffrey Clarke.

Perhaps the most shocking event of tonight's concert aboard a Rocks Off! cruise on the Liberty Belle Riverboat was that Black Lips provided no shocking events. Comparatively, it was only a year ago that New York fans saw same-sex kissing, nudity, masturbation and urination during a Black Lips concert. Alexander and Swilley nevertheless led and fostered a calamitous dynamic, playing raucous cowpunk-inflected garage music that rocked the boat more than the post-storm current of the Hudson River. The songs often were led by a vocal melody and then punctuated with guitar and sax lines that occasionally drifted into the atonal zone. Brash and boisterous, these were raw and rowdy rock and roll tunes, stripped of all finesse so that musicians and audience were moved by gritty guitars and a primal pulse. The more toned-down songs at their core resembled 1960s pop tunes, but with little attempt to polish the uproarious boom of each musician's contribution. The intensity and immediacy of this clattering sound was abrasive yet compellingly exciting. The Black Lips set was noisy, clamorous and thoroughly engaging.

Visit Black Lips at www.black-lips.com.