IFLTS: 'Dirty Hands,' Black Lips

'Dirty Hands,' Black Lips
From 2005's 'Let It Bloom'

My taste in foodstuffs is easily delineated: Given a snacking choice, I prefer sweet over salty, smooth over crunchy and pink 'n' frothy over brown 'n' biting time and time again. So how do I fare when I'm offered a treat that manages the trick of being both sweet and salty -- like a chocolate-covered pretzel? Best of both worlds, I say. And that's also how I sum up 'Dirty Hands,' by Atlanta's self-proclaimed "flower punk" quartet the Black Lips: It's sweet, salty, smooth, crunchy, pink, brown, frothy and biting all at once.

Think of a hard, garage-dwelling band's softest moments, like the Ramones' 'I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend' or Johnny Thunders' 'You Can't Put Your Arms Around a Memory' and you may recognize only a couple of the suspected fathers of 'Dirty Hands.' A romantic ballad for the OCD age, the song adds a layer of Stones-y grit to the concept behind the Beatles' 'I Want to Hold Your Hand' that no Wet-Nap can scour. In a chorus right out of some classic song that never existed but sounds like the '70s doing the '60s doing the '50s, the Black Lips pose this soon to be immortal question to their intended love object: "Do you really wanna hold my dirty hand?" I say grab on to it and never relinquish your grip, Purell be damned!

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