Loose Lips: Talkin' Trash

The Loose Lips play straight-up raunchy rock and roll, like a white trash Rolling Stones. These Bay Area 30-somethings take a cue from such influences and make a point out of not taking themselves too seriously. There are no ambitious statements or leaps of creativity here: just bad-ass, campy, chord-driven, shaggy hair-sportin' scuzz. A gnarly punk ethic drives the mid-tempo power chords without compromising the sassy tight-Levis-and-sunglasses sleaziness in which the band flamboyantly revels. With song titles like "Young Girl Tease" and "Lipstick Heart," the Loose Lips straddle the line between slick and smarmy, their well-greased sound deliberately rough around the edges. Their swagger is charmed by a garage rock nostalgia that reeks of hangovers, five o'clock shadows, and leopard-print car interiors. You get a glimpse of how their predecessors—Johnny Thunders, Iggy and the Stooges, the Dead Boys, and other gods of American proto-punkdom—might have felt after a night of tequila, under-aged girls and heavy cocaine use.

My rosy vision of these '70s icons of debauchery could be clouded by the tendency of youth to glorify the trash of the previous generation. But this album evokes a moment in music history when rock exploded into a quasi-religion among suburban kids everywhere—long after music lost its starry-eyed innocence, long before grunge made grime the next big thing. Degeneracy might be over-the-hill in the 21st century, but the Loose Lips soldier on, oblivious. And dude, what could be more rock than that? (TKO)

—Michelle Chen

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