The Black Lips, Natural Child and Red Mass played a raucous show at Theatre Corona (pics, review)

All photos courtesy of www.jasonhughesphoto.com

Atlanta’s Black Lips rolled into Montreal’s Corona Theatre for a raucous show last week in support of their recently-released Under the Rainbow LP, headlining a great bill that also included Nashville’s Natural Child, and Montreal’s own Red Mass.

Red Mass set the mood for the night early on, with an energetic set that flittered from powerhouse garage rock, moody post-punk, and shredding thrash, all at the drop of a dime. The Montreal collective features a wide-ranging and rotating lineup of local garage rock artists, spearheaded by wild frontman Roy Vucino, aka Choyce, of CPC Gangbangs and Les Sexareenos. Warming up a large, slowly-filling venue at 8:00pm is no easy feat, but Red Mass easily took the bait, and delivered an exhilarating opening set.

Nashville’s Natural Child trio were up next, with their laid-back brand of southern party rock. If Wooderson from Dazed and Confused fronted a bar band, you might wind up with something like Natural Child. Tight classic rock-inspired jams about women, and getting high. “Blind Owl Speaks,” off of 2012’s great Hand In Heaven LP, sums up their credo pretty well: “Roll it up/light it up/smoke it up/snort it up/shoot it down/drink it up.” The band have their live set down pat, fleshed out on this tour by a slide guitarist and keyboardist to provide some extra muscle. While a ton of bands are copping the southern rock aesthetic these days, Natural Child are the real deal, a no-nonsense garage rock band simply out to provide a good time. 

Black Lips took the stage with a classy curtain raise, and the crowd lost it immediately. There were dozens of awkward first-time stage-dives within the first few minutes of their set, and the crowd continued to flirt about the stage for the remainder of the show. The band seemed genuinely surprised by the chaos, which reached a peak with “Bad Kids,” off of 2007’s Good Bad Not Evil, culminating in the highlight of the show, where a kid crowd-surfed while enthusiastically flipping off security the entire time. The entire set had an American Bandstand under siege vibe, with the young crowd constantly trying to thwart the increasingly-annoyed security staff, who eventually just started dragging kids off the stage in headlocks.

Black Lips have undergone a few stylistic shifts since their early garage-rock days, but with their recent Under the Rainbow LP harkening back to their initial stripped-down sound, the band stuck mostly to their garage and punk roots roots for their blistering set, which seemed to suit the crowd just fine. They did concede to their psychedelic-side a few times, bathing the stage in swirling lights for a couple of slower numbers, but in general this was a total barnburner, that proved once again that Black Lips (and their fans) truly know how to throw a party.

Check out more pics from each set below.

Red Mass

Natural Child

Black Lips