Out of the garage and into the spotlight, the Black Lips prove that offbeat guitar rock is not dead. After a deliberately disheveled Good Bad Not Evil, in 2007, their fifth album, 200 Million Thousand, introduces the edgy and inventive band to the masses without losing the sound that appealed to their underground fan base. Now, this self-titled “flower punk” band from Atlanta mixes sounds across all genres to produce a soundtrackcomparable to those associated with the most creative indie films.

As their song “Trapped In a Basement” suggests, the Black Lips thrives in their natural environment: straight guitar ballads and simple live recordings. The roughly recorded “Drugs” and “Black Baby Jesus of Today” emulate a similar sound, one usually associated with live albums that allow the band to creatively experiment with guitar ballads. Experimenting with edgy preludes, voice and instrumental sounds, and even bleeping out their own lyrics (“I Saw God”), the Black Lips create an album full of underground style.

In fact, this planned style of songs that seem like impromptu encores is probably a tribute to their notoriously wild live performances. In garage band style, they focus primarily on producing restless instrumentals, sometimes at the loss of focus on lyrics. This devotion to offbeat rock, however, sometimes confuses their fresh and strikingly pop sensibility.

These more pop-like songs, “Short Fuse,” “Again & Again” and “Take My Heart”, illustrate the Black Lips’ ongoing maturation from a garage band to a band ready to take the rock genre by storm. Here the band produces the songs worthy of radio popularity, but with less of the underground sound that gave them their original fan base. A single like “Short Fuse,” which blends more chill instrumentals with their original voices, has the originality and smarts to gain major attention from fans of many genres, without the obvious edginess.

While the Black Lips obviously express the desire for creativity between their songs, the many differences between their underground guitar sounds and the fresh rock-pop sounds make their album a sometimes odd mix between genres at first listen. From song to song, the Black Lips change from The White Stripes, to Vampire Weekend, to a mix between the Beatles and The Ramones in a solid 51 minutes.

Overall, 200 Million Thousand strikes a delicate balance between a garage bands’ search for originality and creativity and an upcoming band’s search for their big break. This young, crunchy-punk ensemble has the talent, creativity and cunning musical ability to compete with the upcoming rock bands of the decade. Although it is difficult at times to tell who they are, this album is certainly a beginning for The Black Lips’ advancement as a band who can capture audiences from the underground to the indie Yet beyond these edgy sounds and deliberately crafted sloppiness is an album full of creative and clever rock experiments bound to please the Black Lips’ expanding fan base.

4 out of 5 stars