I'll Be with You

The song wears its promise in its title and doesn't undercut it with irony, which for the Black Lips represents a kind of restraint. The guitars chime with a brightness unusual in their catalog — clean-ish tones, or at least cleaner, with the reverb serving warmth rather than menace. The rhythm pushes forward with a buoyancy that keeps the track from settling into sentimentality; there's too much kinetic energy for it to go soft. Vocally, the delivery hovers between reassurance and an almost manic insistence, the line between devotion and obsession productively blurred. The harmonies, when they arrive, have that roughed-up Beach Boys quality the band has always chased — the ideal of beauty approached through imperfect means. Structurally it's tight, the band corralling their natural looseness into something with actual momentum and direction. It fits within the Atlanta garage scene's particular gift for making emotional directness feel dangerous rather than saccharine. This is a song for the beginning of something — early days with someone new, driving somewhere unfamiliar with the radio loud, the future still genuinely open.