Black Lips talk Almighty Defenders collaboration

Jared Swilley from Atlanta garage rock band Black Lips recently caught up with Rip It Up Digital ahead of their tour of Australian tour which sees them dropping by Adelaide as part of the Laneway Festival. As well as discussing drunken punch ups with Wavves and expulsion from India, Jared revealed how his band, King Khan and BBQ got together to form The Almighty Defenders and make an album in just four days.

So how did the project come about?

"We’ve been really close with King Kahn and BBQ for the last few years. We’ve toured with them a lot in the States and Europe and Canada and we’ve always talked about doing a record together. We recorded stuff here and there with both of them over the past few years. But we all ended up in Berlin for about 10 days together and it was really cold outside, there was nothing to do and we had a studio at our disposal so it just seemed like the logical thing to do and we just kind of had fun with it. It wasn’t planned out at all, we were originally just gonna record some Black Lips songs with them helping out but then it just morphed into this other band.

Are there any plans to tour the album?

We’ve got a European tour together in spring as The Almighty Defenders.

I read that you laid the entire album down in 10 days. Fact or fiction?

"Oh it was less than that. I think it was written, recorded and mixed in four days. We probably could have benefitted from taking more time on it but that was just the nature of that session. We’ve recorded that fast before. That was a little fast though, especially that we’d just come up with the band and all the songs but I kind of liked it that way. It gave it a good energy."

To catch the rest of this interview, keep your eyes peeled for Rip It Up's Laneway edition, hitting the streets in early 2010.

Black Lips play the St. Jerome's Laneway Festival on Fri Feb 5 at Fowler's Live along with Echo & The Bunnymen, Sarah Blasko, Florence & The Machine, Mumford & Sons, Dappled Cities and many more.

The Almighty Defenders is out now through Vice

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