vocals as he slides from conversational to caterwauling. Sidewinding bass lines and slashing guitar help pull together ballads of marital woe (“The Drifting Housewife”), epic rock-outs (“I Am the Supercargo”), and rousing takes on regret (“Your Acting’s Like the End of the World”). J. GABRIEL BOYLAN

gangstas’ “Mind Playing Tricks on Me” and the New Orleans parade chant “Iko Iko.” Who knows what Glass Candy will mutate into next? ANDY BE TA

Black Lips stage a bizarre in-store at Olan Mills.

FROM LEF T: ZACH WOLFE; LIAM MALONE Y

Evil Nine They Live!

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MYSPACE AMAZON
British beat junkies’ lively
symphony for the undead
Concept albums can be
dicey, but this Brighton, Eng-
land electro duo negotiate
the terrain smartly, crafting
the most appealing musical
ode to zombies since Thriller.
The Underworld-ish “Feed
on You” and horror-movie
march “How Do We Stop the
Normals?” set the spooky
tone amid ever-present
washes of minor-key synths.
But beats that throb, stomp,
whip, and crack, plus a
diverse parade of guest
vocalists (underground MCs
El-P and Beans, cow-punk
howler Emily Breeze, and
Bernard Sumner doppel-
gänger David AutoKratz),
steer the proceedings well
away from the novelty bin.
DAVID PEISNER

away from the Red Hot Chili Peppers has been wildly, even exhaustingly, ambitious—The Empyrean is his tenth solo album (and sixth since 2004). Unshackled again from the need to craft radio-ready riffs, the guitarist unfurls long-winded but beguiling keepers such as “Before the Beginning,” a bittersweet, serpentine instrumental. “God” nods to effervescent, Zombies-style ’60s pop, while he warbles in a charmingly fragile falsetto. But the highlight is set closer “After the Ending,” a wobbly, synth-drenched power ballad that showcases Frusciante’s knack for warping even the most hackneyed forms into intriguing new shapes. SHANNON ZIMMERMAN

Pretty. Wasted.
Garage poppers do stupid, messy, brilliant things
John Frusciante
The Empyrean

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MYSPACE AMAZON
Chilis’ freak-flag guitarist
stretches (way) out
John Frusciante’s career

Glass Candy
Deep Gems

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MYSPACE AMAZON
Eccentric Portland pair
spook the dance floor
Vocalist Ida No and beat
programmer Johnny
Jewel morphed from
glam-damaged no-wavers
on 2003’s Love Love Love
into Italo-disco zombies
on 2007’s B/E/A/T/B/O/X.
And this collation of singles
and B-sides fluctuates just
as wildly: “Feeling Without
Touching” teasingly tweaks
Madonna’s “Into the Groove”
vocal melody, “Miss Broad-
way” sassily remakes Belle
Epoque’s 1977 dance hit, and
“Geto Boys” is a bewildering
mash-up of the Houston

Goblin Cock Come With Me if You Want to Live

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MYSPACE AMAZON
Heavy-riffing goof
lives down to its name
The sophomore effort from
Pinback frontman Rob
Crow’s stoner-rock side
project should be taken
exactly as seriously as the
band’s name. Which is too
bad, because shards of
Come With Me suggest Crow
has more to offer the metal
gods than the intermit-
tently awesome sludgefests
served up here. Anyone
with regularity issues would
do well to partake of the
bowel-loosening subsonics
on “Big Up Your Willies,”
while both “Loch” and “Ode
to Billy Jack” briefly achieve
Kyuss-ian grandeur. But the
savagely beautiful “Haint”
is Goblin Cock’s only unim-
peachable moment. Joke’s
on them. DAVID MARCHESE

Handsome Furs
Face Control

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MYSPACE AMAZON
Electro-pop PDAs from
enchanting Canuck couple
Most of Handsome Furs’
promo photos show
members Alexei Perry and
Dan Boeckner (also of Wolf
Parade) crawling all over

Across four albums, black lips have made sloppiness
an aesthetic choice. Their live shows have the feel of a
bunch of blitzed teenagers spazzing out on borrowed
instruments in a friend’s basement. Their records sound
like extended pranks. but amateurish charm grows
tedious, even when delivered with the balls-out energy this
quartet routinely generates. fortunately, buried beneath the
lips’ psychedelic slop heap are surprisingly exacting pop hooks,
clever musical experiments, and insidious grooves that belie the
band’s wastrel image.

“Drugs,” the second track on the atlanta

jesters’ fifth album, exemplifies the lips’ appealing dichotomy: It’s an ode to getting fucked-up with hookers in the backseat of your car, sung by bassist Jared swilley in a suitably unhinged wail, but set to an impossibly infectious 1950s sock-hop beat. on “starting over,” cole alexander sounds like he’s singing into a half-empty tin of creamed corn, but his woozy slurs are buffeted by a warm, jangling guitar line nicked from the la’s’ “There she Goes.”

but the most intriguing tune here is “The Drop I Hold,” a stoned, cosmic bum-out that features alexander half-rapping, “ain’t got no money, but the gods make it fuckin’ rain” over slo-mo guitars and dubby atmospherics. It’s as if for a moment the lips tried to be lil Wayne instead of the Troggs, an idea so foolish that it actually suits them perfectly. DAVID PEISNER

BLACK LIPS 200 Million Thousand

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MUSIC STUFF! ON SPIN.COM! NO KIDDING! / MARCH 2009 79