Leaving Cuckoo’s Nest to amp-up across the sunken dancefloor, we head outside to loiter and smoke. White Heat book well, so the number of people outside the club at this point in the evening – about a quarter to 9 – is usually a useful barometer of how interested London is in the night’s main draw. For once our anticipation levels rub up against the rest of town’s. Even so, someone’s set on reminding us why we’re all here, decking the staircase out in replicated A4 posters pushing the new record.
Cuckoo’s Nest have a boy and a girl. The boy bangs drums like they’re play-fighting, the girl stands there wringing the neck of her Batmobile guitar like a nervous virgin giving a handjob. Drums are fills, songs are riffs. It’s loud, and at times the volume tries to lifts things, but a band bitching throughout about levels makes us forget we left for cigarettes. Worse still, it’s a sound that hasn’t got any thrill to give any more. By the time they finish we’re back to square one, the sure hit of noise penned in and easily sorted by my fuzzy mind, which doesn’t even wanna give it the glass ceiling of “loud? Respect!” its hackneyed whining demands. Truth? If Cuckoo’s Nest had a boy and a boy this’d be standard. Noise has moved onwards and upwards, buzzards.
zZz are decent. Two grown boys from Amsterdam, one bearded and made-up and the other flexing that scally gone ‘shroom-fishing look. They give '60's psych the shock treatment, rocky horror chamber shorts rising from the bed straps with more panic in their heads than they're giving us, as mouths chatter loud through it. Still, there are a few moments when the sound opens up and pools brains with the audience so we feel their discomfort in sudden kicking snares and midnight warehouse howls. They’re songs are called ‘House of Sin’ and ‘Ecstacy’ and ‘Sweet Sex’.
Next, a Badwan spinning boy lollipops and Spector to sweeten our ears ahead of Black Lips' sticky fingered tantrum-ing.
The crowd gathers mass. I’m gonna use two boys stood in front of me as avatars. Excuse me. You can tell a lot about a person by watching the back of their head at a show.
The first – a rook-haired white ‘kid’ in leathuh. He’s rocking back and forth, slamming a long-empty glass bottle in a crap rhythm loud on the stage and probably not as drunk as he’s trying to make out, but still essentially blottko. He doesn’t care, basically, is the message he’s putting across. The second is a man in leather and a flat cap, hands in the pockets of his blue jeans and he seems sober. He does care, and shows it when Cole Alexander spits up above his head but fails to catch it all back in his mouth, his wet lips sending droplets of saliva onto the crowd and the two boys down the front. The second boy will later launch three well aimed punnets of spittle at the back of Alexander's backturned head. The first will keep on lurching and slamming regardless.
The trajectory of Black Lips rests in this gap in perception. One boy slamming it, going on sincere and the other stock and nodding, but self-aware enough to refuse the spi(ri)t of ’77 as an unwelcome needle through a cushion of easy irony. ‘Course, the band's charm lies not in their originality – songs like ‘Cold Hands’, ‘Lean’, ‘Katrina’, ‘Hippie Hippie Hoorah’ - all played tonight - are as familiar as the sound of your bedroom door. Still, they’re fucking great songs, and Black Lips have a slew of them.
Where the band differs from others splicing the ‘60s and ‘70s – ‘flower punk’ is, rarely, an apt description – is in their conviction and execution. It is sincere, they are this fucked up, this music suits them down to the earth and when the band slur incoherently about “Dirty hands, you’ve gotta wash your dirty han’s! You go for a dump, open up your asshole…WASH YOUR HANDS!” there are no sly winks in the inflection. They’ve convinced me and many, but people are so comfortable in that irony gap that they’re just gonna have to keep ploughing on, perhaps throwing in a few uneasy silences, to shatter that glass ceiling I was talking about earlier. Affected vocal through a waily mic and gold dentures say they will do it. Their grubby faces are pushed up against the glass.
Cole Alexander doesn't care about this at the moment, at all. As the set clatters closed he’s busy unzipping his jeans, guitar neck in the way 'til his trousers and boxers drop enough to let him fall out and, as the band give it the big r'n'r finish, three crashes of cymbal, bass and guitar are embellished by Alexander personally, as he whips it out and strikes the 1-2-3 with his flaccid cock.
