The Black Lips are tough to write about, since their gnarly, raucous flower-freak sound was so original and dedicated for a very small subset of music when they started grinding on their own, but now that so many shitty garage-filth-slacker-punk bands have aped their sound, it’s difficult to separate the founding fathers from the apostles. Because, of course, the Black Lips didn’t invent punk or rock or punk rock, but they did manage to shake some nasty Atlanta salt on their trade in a way that made their subgenre more surreally juvenile (and thus accessible) while also showcasing a talent for hiding real skill amid woozy shithole humor. I don’t think the most fucked-up band at the end of the night deserves a trophy, but it remains true that these guys have sacrificed some serious liver tissue for almost two decades now in a supposedly slacker genre, so some credit is still due. by Kim Selling