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Flaming Lips
Flaming Lips
Rock has produced few stranger or more daring bands in the last 35 years than Oklahoma City's Flaming Lips, who embrace everything from merry prankster psychedelia to orchestral pop. From the outset, the Lips tried to bridge the seemingly insurmountable gap between Butthole Surfers-style dementia and bubblegum pop, with mixed results. Their early albums are humbles of ideas, the weirdness genuine, the songs expansive and sometimes giddily incoherent. They're as much a response to hardcore punk's inflexible pithiness as to mainstream rock's polish. Rarely does a band have such a signature sound on the first track of their first album, but that's exactly what the Lips did with their debut album (not counting their self-titled debut E.P., a recording that shows the band so much in their embryonic phase that Wayne had yet to take over lead-vocals- it was his brother singing!), Hear It Is, released in 1986 on Restless Records, and their song "With You," although, when you have a voice as signature as Wayne Coyne's, magical things are bound to happen. The band really began to find their sound with 1990's In A Priest Driven Ambulance, with a coherent vision starting to peek through the chaos. It comes courtesy of an irony-free cover of the standard "(What a) Wonderful World," sung with wobbly conviction by Wayne Coyne. For all its disorienting ugliness and alienating strangeness, the world really is a wonderful place, the Lips insist- an unfashionable stance (especially in the grunge era!) the band would continue to explore with increasingly plangent results. The addition of guitar-effects maestro Ronald Jones and monster drummer Stephen Drozd gave Coyne the musical muscle to carry out his ambitions, and on 1993's Transmission from the Satellite Heart, the Lips fashioned their first masterpiece: the Butthole-bubblegum fusion fully realized in sing-along noise anthems such as "Turn It On" and "Be My Head," and the strangely poignant "Pilot Can at the Queer of God." Despite the fluke hit "She Don't Use Jelly," the album transcends novelty. Its multilayered production rewards headphones scrutiny and inspires head-banging thanks to Drozd's John Bohnam-like beats. 1995's Clouds Taste Metallic is a similarly obtrude but fascinating attempt at making a pop album while 1997's Zaireeka represents the Lips at their most indulgent. It's impractical, ambitious, inspiring, and fascinating (probably why there is a whole 33 1/3 book written about the album). Zaireeka is a box set of four CDs designed to be played simultaneously- like I said: it's inspiring in its loony ambition. At its best, Zaireeka allows listeners to feel as though they're not just hearing the music but standing inside it. It's one of the coolest music experiences you'll ever have and I distinctly remember listening to it in middle school with two of my friends and we all had to press play at the same time on four different CD players. 1999's The Soft Bulletin was a turning point. Instead of clouding Coyne's vulnerability in weirdness, the ornate orchestrations heightened it. The album uses offbeat subject matter- the dizziness caused by a head wound ("The Spark That Bled"), the poisonous spider bite ("The Spiderbite Song"), two scientists competing to find the cure to a disease ("Race for the Prize")- as a doorway to universal subjects such as failure, perseverance, and mortality. Coyne's lyrics displayed a newfound directness that is disarming, while the retooled lineup bypasses rock in favor of sumptuously arranged, ultra-melodic grandeur. On the surface, 2002's Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots is a return to the artfully conceived strangeness of the band's earlier work. Its cover image is a cartoon that depicts a tiny heroine facing off against a forbidding giant: A Powerpuff girl versus Black Sabath's "Iron Man," a not inaccurate simplification of the band's sound. There's a greater emphasis on computerized drumbeats and loops. But there's no denying the emotion punch of the songs. Once again, Coyne strips away his emotional armor on "Do You Realize?" an anthem about transcending tragedy that sounds like a cross between acoustic John Lennon and Disney movie soundtrack. 2006 saw the release of the misunderstood but the aged-oh-so-well At War With The Mystics album, with a nod to the George W. Busgh reign with "The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song," Steven's first solo-sung song, "Pompeii Am Götterdämmerung" and personal favorite "Mr. Ambulance Driver." Their next release was a double-album, which any rock band has to do if they want to be taken seriously... anyways... 2009 saw the release of my personal favorite Embryonic, which the band recorded from scraps centered around jams they had had. They started to get weird (I know that's hard to believe) with 24-hour songs released in human skulls and gummy skulls. In this time-frame, there was also collaboration E.P.'s and albums, with the highlight being 2012's The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends. As if that wasn't enough, the band went on to do the unspeakable and cover classic-rock albums that are never meant to be touched: 2009's The Dark Side of the Moon, or as it is formally titled: The Flaming Lips and Stardeath and White Dwarfs with Henry Rollins and Peaches Doing The Dark Side of the Moon and 2014's Sgt. Pepper's or as it is formally titled (and more manageable to say): With a Little Help from My Fwends. Flaming Lips would finally release a break-up album, which, again, any band should have if they want to be taken seriously. After Wayne split with his partner of 30 years it was only a matter of time before we got the highly underrated break-up album, 2013's The Terror. Since then, the band has released 2017's Oczy Mlody (with the Miley Cyrus featuring highlight "We A Family"), 2019's King's Mouth, and this year's [2020's] American Head. Each release has their highlights. This band has stayed weird and stayed awesome. This band has released so much stuff, I haven't even mentioned Wayne's freaky alien-Christmas movie Christmas on Mars or their album they did with Miley Cyrus or the song they did for the SpongeBob soundtrack or the even better song they did for that Dane Cook movie no-one saw. There isn't enough internet-storage space for me to explain how much this band means to me. Seeing them live will change your life. They're that sick.
It's...
The Flaming Lips
Flaming Lips
Flaming Lips
Rock has produced few stranger or more daring bands in the last 35 years than Oklahoma City's Flaming Lips, who embrace everything from merry prankster psychedelia to orchestral pop. From the outset, the Lips tried to bridge the seemingly insurmountable gap between Butthole Surfers-style dementia and bubblegum pop, with mixed results. Their early albums are humbles of ideas, the weirdness genuine, the songs expansive and sometimes giddily incoherent. They're as much a response to hardcore punk's inflexible pithiness as to mainstream rock's polish. Rarely does a band have such a signature sound on the first track of their first album, but that's exactly what the Lips did with their debut album (not counting their self-titled debut E.P., a recording that shows the band so much in their embryonic phase that Wayne had yet to take over lead-vocals- it was his brother singing!), Hear It Is, released in 1986 on Restless Records, and their song "With You," although, when you have a voice as signature as Wayne Coyne's, magical things are bound to happen. The band really began to find their sound with 1990's In A Priest Driven Ambulance, with a coherent vision starting to peek through the chaos. It comes courtesy of an irony-free cover of the standard "(What a) Wonderful World," sung with wobbly conviction by Wayne Coyne. For all its disorienting ugliness and alienating strangeness, the world really is a wonderful place, the Lips insist- an unfashionable stance (especially in the grunge era!) the band would continue to explore with increasingly plangent results. The addition of guitar-effects maestro Ronald Jones and monster drummer Stephen Drozd gave Coyne the musical muscle to carry out his ambitions, and on 1993's Transmission from the Satellite Heart, the Lips fashioned their first masterpiece: the Butthole-bubblegum fusion fully realized in sing-along noise anthems such as "Turn It On" and "Be My Head," and the strangely poignant "Pilot Can at the Queer of God." Despite the fluke hit "She Don't Use Jelly," the album transcends novelty. Its multilayered production rewards headphones scrutiny and inspires head-banging thanks to Drozd's John Bohnam-like beats. 1995's Clouds Taste Metallic is a similarly obtrude but fascinating attempt at making a pop album while 1997's Zaireeka represents the Lips at their most indulgent. It's impractical, ambitious, inspiring, and fascinating (probably why there is a whole 33 1/3 book written about the album). Zaireeka is a box set of four CDs designed to be played simultaneously- like I said: it's inspiring in its loony ambition. At its best, Zaireeka allows listeners to feel as though they're not just hearing the music but standing inside it. It's one of the coolest music experiences you'll ever have and I distinctly remember listening to it in middle school with two of my friends and we all had to press play at the same time on four different CD players. 1999's The Soft Bulletin was a turning point. Instead of clouding Coyne's vulnerability in weirdness, the ornate orchestrations heightened it. The album uses offbeat subject matter- the dizziness caused by a head wound ("The Spark That Bled"), the poisonous spider bite ("The Spiderbite Song"), two scientists competing to find the cure to a disease ("Race for the Prize")- as a doorway to universal subjects such as failure, perseverance, and mortality. Coyne's lyrics displayed a newfound directness that is disarming, while the retooled lineup bypasses rock in favor of sumptuously arranged, ultra-melodic grandeur. On the surface, 2002's Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots is a return to the artfully conceived strangeness of the band's earlier work. Its cover image is a cartoon that depicts a tiny heroine facing off against a forbidding giant: A Powerpuff girl versus Black Sabath's "Iron Man," a not inaccurate simplification of the band's sound. There's a greater emphasis on computerized drumbeats and loops. But there's no denying the emotion punch of the songs. Once again, Coyne strips away his emotional armor on "Do You Realize?" an anthem about transcending tragedy that sounds like a cross between acoustic John Lennon and Disney movie soundtrack. 2006 saw the release of the misunderstood but the aged-oh-so-well At War With The Mystics album, with a nod to the George W. Busgh reign with "The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song," Steven's first solo-sung song, "Pompeii Am Götterdämmerung" and personal favorite "Mr. Ambulance Driver." Their next release was a double-album, which any rock band has to do if they want to be taken seriously... anyways... 2009 saw the release of my personal favorite Embryonic, which the band recorded from scraps centered around jams they had had. They started to get weird (I know that's hard to believe) with 24-hour songs released in human skulls and gummy skulls. In this time-frame, there was also collaboration E.P.'s and albums, with the highlight being 2012's The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends. As if that wasn't enough, the band went on to do the unspeakable and cover classic-rock albums that are never meant to be touched: 2009's The Dark Side of the Moon, or as it is formally titled: The Flaming Lips and Stardeath and White Dwarfs with Henry Rollins and Peaches Doing The Dark Side of the Moon and 2014's Sgt. Pepper's or as it is formally titled (and more manageable to say): With a Little Help from My Fwends. Flaming Lips would finally release a break-up album, which, again, any band should have if they want to be taken seriously. After Wayne split with his partner of 30 years it was only a matter of time before we got the highly underrated break-up album, 2013's The Terror. Since then, the band has released 2017's Oczy Mlody (with the Miley Cyrus featuring highlight "We A Family"), 2019's King's Mouth, and this year's [2020's] American Head. Each release has their highlights. This band has stayed weird and stayed awesome. This band has released so much stuff, I haven't even mentioned Wayne's freaky alien-Christmas movie Christmas on Mars or their album they did with Miley Cyrus or the song they did for the SpongeBob soundtrack or the even better song they did for that Dane Cook movie no-one saw. There isn't enough internet-storage space for me to explain how much this band means to me. Seeing them live will change your life. They're that sick.
It's...
The Flaming Lips
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