Who knew? The Mother Hips are not only not broken up but they also have a new album out: Kiss the Crys­tal Flake. (There’s a review at Pitch­fork.) And to top it all off they played last night at (their words) good ol’ LaSalle’s in Chico. Good ol’ indeed. (For anyone who didn’t spend the best days of their youth in unabated thrall to the Hips: imag­ine a West Coast Wilco with har­monies. Some of their best songs date all the way back to the early days at the Bambi Inn in Butte Mead­ows, but the best place to start is prob­a­bly Green Hills of Earth, the last album before their failed breakup.)

A few low-​quality pic­tures from the show will follow.