Black Lips - Arabia Mountain

I do. Unless we make music for ourselves. Before anybody ever heard our music I was making it for myself in our bedroom, and I still love those songs. But as we’ve gotten larger and you play more and you tour you open yourself up to more criticism. You put yourself out there more. It makes you a little nervous to be judged by so many people, because it’s easy for someone to just hear the record one time and just write it off. Maybe if they’d listened to it five times they might have liked it. To spend a lot of time, like a year, on a record, to have someone critique you can be a little... it affects you emotionally, you know? But it goes both ways! Some times you get a real glowing review and it makes you feel good about yourself. You definitely put yourself out there and you have to accept some of the criticism and what other people think of you. It’s kind of hard.

A little bit, but not too much. We had a lot of faith in Mark and we trusted him, and he actually came through. It actually made it a little easier to know somebody who’s acclaimed and talented [was] listening to our music and believing in it and helping make it the best it could be. I felt very fortunate to have him on our side, especially being our first time using a producer.

I think it was real out-of-left-field for us and for him to do this. In a lot of ways we’re quite different, so that made us a little nervous. But it’s good to be nervous. I read a thing the other day that basically said ‘if you’re not nervous it means you don’t care’.

There’s a mountain in Georgia. We were looking for pictures for our album cover, and we found this neat place outside Atlanta called Arabia Mountain. It’s a large granite rock. It’s elevated. We took these pictures and then we transposed them with milk, food coloring, and dish soap, which is hydrophobic and repels the colors from the milk.

Yeah, I was happy with the cover. Again, I was nervous about that. Nervous what people think.

Palestine, Turkey, India. Yeah, that’s true. There was a little undertone of that. It’s volatile in that region right now, and we’ve tried to show a lot of openness to that region. So yeah, there’s an undertone of that. We wanted it to be kind of ambiguous, so people would wonder. But it’s really up to people’s interpretation, you know? People don’t know there’s an Arabia Mountain, Georgia, so they just assume it’s that. We also have a Rome, Georgia, and an Athens, Georgia.

We’ve had a lot of onstage kissing. It’s kind of juvenile and innocent. Like a kindergarten orgy. [Laughs]

There’s a band from France I like called King Khan & the Shrines from... all over Europe. Omar Souleyman from Syria. I haven’t seen him live, actually, but from what I’ve seen on Youtube he seems pretty outstanding.

I’m actually not sure where that’s from. What I’ve heard is that in the ‘90s there was a cassette tape of that call; an answering machine went on and it was recording a phone call where this guy was talking crazy to his friend or whatever. So they talked for an hour about heavy metal and all kinds of shit. It used to be a popular road tape for bands in the ‘90s, then it eventually got on the internet. It’s called Tight Bros. From Way Back When I think there’s a TV show called that now. We have a booking agency called “Tight Bros”. I think it all comes from that. It wasn’t a prank call, it was more like a found recording, a field recording. It’s an excerpt that I actually liked. They were talking about which black metal band or whatever was using the book of Necronomicon to conjure spirits into their songs, but the guy’s really talking with conviction about it. It really got me more into heavy metal listening to him talk about it.

That “Mad Dog” song is about playing a record backwards and having subliminal messages, like how Judas Priest got in trouble. In the ‘80s they thought that they told people to kill themselves and they had to go to court. If you play our song backwards there are memetic palindromes, there are actual backwards messages.

The Ke$ha thing was kind of a joke, but there are actually lyrics forward that work if you turn them backwards.

[Laughs] That song is like a tribute to that whole... exactly what you’re talking about.

[Laughs] It was like a concept album we thought of having where we charge an exorbitant amount of money, so like the record is 99 dollars. But you get the record no-money-down, like you get it for free at the store, but you’re on an installment plan of 99 cents a month for 12 years or something. Like a refrigerator that seems great, “Take it for free!” but then it winds up ruining your credit. No money down but it builds interest over ten years. Everybody likes a free record. We didn’t really have time to manifest all that, but maybe in the future we will as kind of an ironic joke on the economy and society. [Laughs]

I’d be open to that, but I don’t think the world is quite in that place right now. But if they took to it, I’d love that. I want to make a bigger live show where we can have more lights and own sound guy and be able to enhance our product and do more crazy stuff. It would take a little success to build out some of the more far-out ideas we have. Like Expensive.

Yeah, much like human evolution. Baby steps. But I think we’ve persevered longer doing it slow and easy than if we’d been a flash in the pan and had a big record label push in 2001.