Latest LP finds The Blacks Lips departing from their steady brand of grungy guitar rock – they’ve made a country record. Sort of. We still have all the basic tropes of a typical Black Lips record: oft-garbled vocals, slightly sloppy performances, some darkly funny (or funnily dark) lyrics and that ever-present attitude of go-fuck-yourself-if-you-don’t-like-it. But we’ll give ’em credit – they do a pretty good job of capturing western swing rhythms, honky tonkin’ bass lines, and boom-chicka-boom guitar pickin’.

Actually, it’s more like country channeled through the Rolling Stones or Flying Burrito Brothers; the electric boogie of “Angola Rodeo” certainly owes a debt to the Brothers’ coke-fueled cover of “Six Days On the Road,” and the hungover ballad “Get It On Time” finds singer Zumi Rosow sounding pretty close to the Mick Jagger of “No Expectations.” But neither the Stones nor the Burrito Brothers could ever write a line like “I feel like a strung out Snuffleupagus on the south side, wearing Vietnamese cowboy clothes”...