The Flaming Lips
“There are no more enemies, and there are no more heroes…just sound.” – Wayne Coyne
“You know, I've never been a big fan of alternative music, but these guys rocked the house!” – Steve Sanders
“God Bless the Flaming Lips.” – Capn Marvel
Albums Reviewed:
Oh My Gawd!!!…The Flaming Lips
Hit To Death In The Future Head
Transmissions From The Satellite Heart
Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots
The Flaming
Lips are a band I’ve only been able to really get into in the last six
or seven months or so, but BOY was it worth the wait. Blasting out of Oklahoma City (what the…?)
two decades ago, they took a little while to really get going, but when they
did, they became one of the most consistent, interesting, melodic, fun, and
HAPPY (yet completely and totally uncheesy) bands of the nineties, and,
now well into the naughties, they show no signs of stopping. Their first three albums are interesting, yet
weird and unfocused amalgamations of total amateurism, classic rock worship,
and immense, as yet untapped talent that finally, after bubbling under the
surface for so long, came out on their superb fourth record, In a
Priest Driven Ambulance. Mid-period
Lips is a paradise of perfect pop melodies, loopy, acid-damaged lyrics, and
exhilarating guitar noise which reached its pinnacle on Clouds Taste
Metallic, following which the group went completely nutsoid, issuing an
album of four CD’s to be played together simultaneously (yup, you read that
right), and they’ve finally become (sort of) household names with their last
two albums, The Soft Penis and Yoshimi is Asian and Thus Probably
Really Hot (Not That I Have an Asian Fetish or Anything). They even had a hit once! Do you remember “She Don’t Use Jelly?” 1993-ish?
I actually don’t. But apparently
it was a hit. Even got them on
The Lips’ lineup has endured constant shifts and changes during the band’s history, but I’m pretty sure the current trio, shown above, will last until somebody dies. Or the band breaks up. The man in the middle is Wayne Coyne, lead vocalist, songwriter, lyricist, idea man, and Great King Lip. He has a lovely voice that sounds like a pre-pubescent Neil Young (no Geddy Lee here!), and generally comes across as a very nice, brilliant, hopelessly optimistic man, and I very much want to be his dear friend. It’s the existence of people like him that makes me dislike people like Bono. He’s cool and stuff. On the right is the only other member of the band to last for its entirety, bassist and soundboard techie guy Michael Ivins. His current baldness really cements my militant atheism (not that the Bush administration hasn’t), because he used to have probably the most ridiculous caucasiafro (white man’s afro) in the history of hair. You can get a peek at it on the Hear It Is cover. Finally, on the left is absolutely top-notch, John Bonham-loud drummer (and a helluva lot of other stuff) Steven Drozd, who’s been in the band for about a decade. I mention everyone else who’s been in the band in the reviews at some point (I think…), so I’m gonna stop typing now before I get carpal tunnel syndrome.
Oh, one more thing. I should let you know that my copies of the Lips’ first four albums are from two fantastic 2002 re-release compilation things. Their self-titled debut EP, first three LP’s, and about 15-20 bonus tracks (unreleased, live, B-sides, etc.) come on the Finally the Punk Rockers are Taking Acid compilation, and In a Priest Driven Ambulance, as well as a disc and half of bonus tracks, come to us on the 2-CD The Day They Shot a Hole in the Jesus Egg compilation, so any reference to those albums are to whatever versions are on those things. I’ll also be sticking an extra paragraph at the end of those four reviews about the bonus tracks, principally to take up space and make it look like I’m putting more effort into these reviews than I actually am. And now I fucking have carpal tunnel syndrome. Goddammit. Thanks, stupid compilations! *Yells in extreme pain, downs 25 Aleve, passes out and dies*
And, onto the reviews!
Hear It Is (1986)
Rating: 6
Best Song: “Godzilla Flick”
First, a quick non-review of the band’s original 1984 self-titled EP, which you can get on that neat-o Finally the Punk Rockers are Taking Acid compilation I mentioned in the intro, along with everything else the band ever recorded before they figured out what the fuck they were doing. Wayne’s brother Mark sings lead vocals (weird, I know), and his voice, though it doesn’t suck ass, isn’t that unique or distinguishable, so let’s all celebrate the fact that he left the band before they attained worldwide commercial success (sort of) and is probably really, really bitter about it. YAY! The songs aren’t all that much to write home about either. “Bag Full of Thoughts” and “Out for a Walk” are half-decent and have a sort-of interestingly weird guitar tone, the catchy rocker “My Own Planet” is the only song here I’d say is all that good, and “Scratchin’ the Door” and the “epic” (tee-hee) “Garden of Eyes/Forever is a Long Time” just totally suck my ass until I have a gross ass-hickey. I’d give it a 5, I think, or maybe a really, really, really low 6 if I were feeling extra-super-generous, but it’s a fucking EP, so fuck it up the ass with a crowbar, because I’m not gonna review it.
And now onto the (as far as this site is concerned) real humble beginnings. And I do mean humble. There’s almost nothing here that suggests the heights the Lips would scale, and not even all that much to suggest the total messy weirdness that would charmingly engulf their next two albums. There are some catchy rockers, a few slower acoustic experimental-ish things, and a stab at something “epic” that really doesn’t work…and that’s just about all you have.
First off,
I don’t really like either of the two tracks people seem to consider “classics”
(that being a relative term) from this album.
“With You” has a pretty acoustic beginning, but then, in its buildup to
loud electric-ness, proceeds to go absolutely NOWHERE besides a little higher
in volume. Screaming “When I’m with
you!!! When I’m with you!!!” over and
over again does not comprise a verse, chorus or bridge, and that’s
that. And I don’t give a fuck if you do
your buildup twice, either,
I actually like some of the less-heralded songs here the most, especially those that show off the fact that the Lips DO know how to write a damn song, but just choose not to sometimes at this point. Take a look at the speed-rocker “Unplugged,” the cleverly catchy “Trains, Brains & Rain,” and the cool “Just Like Before.” They’re all dumb and sloppy, thanks in part to early drummer Richard English (who is completely incapable of actually keeping steady time for more than 15 continuous seconds), but the riffs are there, the structure is there, the hooks are there, and the only thing missing is a head clear of drugs and the willingness to not sound like complete and total amateurs, which would, ofcourse, come in due time.
The second
half of the album contains another couple of experiments, but still nothing
that would clue you on to even their immediate future, and much of it
still doesn’t work. “She is Death,” for
instance, their stab at some kind of slow, atmospheric thing with sound effects
that, you know, art-rock bands try from time to time. It’s not good. I like “Godzilla Flick” enough to make it my
favorite track here, though, even if
I like this album. I really do. Only “She is Death” is something that I would say actively sucks my ass, but nothing on here really grabs my ass. It’s just sloppy, immature indie-rock with a crappy drummer and a bunch of pretty good songs, but nothing that would stand out from shitloads of other bands that I’m sure were around at the time. This one just happened to evolve and improve over time. I’d call it a high 6, but still just a 6. There’s no genius displayed here. Just fun, silly competency.
And now, the bonus tracks overview! “Killer on the Radio” is an OK original that sounds like something from the debut EP, and it’s joined by covers of the Who’s “Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere,” someone’s “Handsome Johnny” and an unnamed studio hack’s “Batman Theme” (seriously), all of which are hilarious. You won’t regret hearing them, but you won’t regret not hearing them either. OK, no, you NEED to hear “Batman Theme,” but only for comedy’s sake.
Oh My Gawd!!!…The Flaming Lips (1987)
Rating: 8
Best Song: “One Million Billionth Of A Millisecond On A Sunday Morning”
The band is still just as amateurish as before, but on this album (and the next one) they also become completely, utterly ridiculous. Just total weirdness and stupidity everywhere. In retrospect, although the band’s fourth album is where they made their big breakthrough, it’s here that you can at least tell they have the potential for a breakthrough. They experimented a little on Hear It Is, but this is where they just totally fucking freak out, chucking all their influences and disparate, drug-ravaged ideas onto one slab of vinyl without considering whether or not any of it actually makes any sense (and then do it again two years later).
This record also starts the grand Lips tradition (not broken for another eight years) of starting off each record with a fast, driving rocker, and “Everything’s Explodin’” is definitely the best rocker they’d come up with so far, principally because THERE’S A FUCKING BREAK IN THE MIDDLE where they can let some interesting, contrasting things happen, in this case some quiet acoustic strumming and pretty backing vocals. “Maximum Dream for Evil Knievel” is similarly cool, with its ridiculous main melody, “Evil Knievel jumped the gun…” breaks and total lack of concern for actually keeping a consistent tempo. See, the band is still just as immature, and while they weren’t exactly going for pop smarts on Hear It Is, now they just don’t give a fuck if ANYTHING makes sense, and their material is better for it. Sometimes they screw up a little (the fade-in/fade-out parts of “The Ceiling is Bendin’ completely escape me), but they usually redeem themselves as well (the rest of the song is cool as hell, from the weird, swirling effect in the chorus, to the bass breaks, to the freaky quasi-falsetto crap). Even the two fruity songs by Richard English (whose drumming is so ridiculously awful on this album that it actually becomes cool precisely because it’s so bad, like a drummer-specific Tormato corollary), “Can’t Exist” and “Thanks to You,” are cool in that they’re pretty and melodic.
What also make this album so fun and oftentimes hilarious are the times when the Lips just slip into total tribute (or even direct ripoff) mode. “One Million Billionth of a Millisecond on a Sunday Morning” is the best Pink Floyd song not actually written by Pink Floyd, and if you stuck the first half in the middle of Meddle or the live half of Ummagumma somewhere, I’m not sure how many people would notice. This song is fucking brilliant, and it’s easily my favorite pre-Priest Lips experience. Richard refrains from trying to insert a needless fill that just fucks up the song every ten seconds for a bit to concentrate on literally channeling Nick Mason, Wayne recites the lyrics in a detached, snobby manner that sounds EXACTLY like Dave Gilmour or Roger Waters, and the whole thing sounds like a cross between “Echoes” and the live version of “Careful with that Axe, Eugene,” until the heavy, hypnotic guitar riffing comes in at the end and helps me to reach a catharsis that a band this clueless and amateurish really shouldn’t be able to make happen.
But that’s
just the “tribute” mode. As I said,
there is a “direct ripoff mode,” and while this would normally annoy and/or
offend me, coming from this band at this time it only makes me laugh. The main riff to “Can’t Stop the Spring” (at
least after the orchestral sample
goes away) is basically a direct lifting from the Violent Femmes’ “Blister in
the Sun,” and the goofy prog-metallic riffing goop in the exquisitely titled
“Prescription: Love” reminded me of Van Halen’s “Girl Gone Bad” within about
two seconds of hearing it for the first time.
But it’s funny! This album is
just a total trip. There are two
deliciously weird linking tracks called “Ode to C.C.” (Yes, it’s the guy from
Poison!), and they even close it with a “power ballad,” the cute piano-based
“Love Yer Brain,” which ends with about three minutes of random smashing of
TV’s and VCR’s and sloths and breakfast cereals and orangutans and some other
random stuff before Brother Maynard finally gives Wayne the goddamn Holy Hand
Grenade of Antioch.
This album is just
entertaining. Not objectively all that
much better than Hear It Is, but OODLES of NOODLES more
entertaining. I mean, I’m not gonna sit
here and claim it’s anywhere near the objective quality of the other 8’s on
this page, but based on pure entertainment value, it deserves a rating no lower. This album is what happens when a talented
band that hasn’t yet figured out what to do with itself essentially says “screw
it, we’re just gonna goof around for 45 minutes,” and this decision turns out
about as well as it possibly could. I
mean, they couldn’t keep going with this type of stuff forever (hell, they tried the same approach and declined on their next album),
but for a moment in time they managed to get their shit together despite not
really having their shit together at all. And they put Beatles samples at the beginning
and end of the record. Because the
Beatles are cool.
Compilation bonus track time! This time not all that worthwhile. Mark sings on some early demos of “Trains,
Brains & Rain,” “Jesus Shootin’ Heroin” (which is actually better in this
version, since Mark really YELLS the “AHHHHHHH!!” part I completely neglected
to mention in my Hear It Is review) and something called “Groove Room,”
which is, um, weird. Their cover of Led
Zeppelin’s “Communication Breakdown” sounds like it was done by retarted
pre-schoolers, and the live version of “Million Billionth” is unnecessary,
although the crowd noise is cool and the song still fucking RULES MERCILESS
ASS.
Mike Noto
(thepublicimage79@hotmail.com) writes:
This album is absolutely,
ludicrously great. Since the only Lips album I'd
heard before this was "Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots," this doesn't
even
sound like the same band that did that album. Like, at all.
Interesting things:
Wayne Coyne sounds almost exactly like Paul Westerberg on a couple of these
songs. "Everything's Explodin'," in particular, has a Coyne vocal
that
sounds so much like Westerberg that I'd have sworn it was a Replacements
outtake if the song wasn't catchier than most of the Replacements songs I've
ever heard. It also definitely rocks harder. Better guitar tones, better
everything.
line between total amateur and rockin' professional. It often slips closer
to total amateur, but it's so ridiculously fun precisely because of that.
These guys really loved Zeppelin, but still loved making fun of them too. I
applaud their good taste.
Richard English can keep a steady beat. What he cannot refrain from doing,
however, is playing idiotically arrhythmic fills that sound completely
stupid and sloppy, which also make the songs sound even better. Why? Because
every time English plays a dumb fill, he comes back in exactly at the right
time. And somehow Coyne and Michael Ivins never get thrown off by it.
"Can't Stop The Spring" isn't a "Blister In The Sun"
ripoff. It's a "Living
Loving Maid (She's Just A Woman)" ripoff. And you call yerself a Zeppelin
fan.
"One Million Billionth of a Millisecond on a Sunday Morning" is pretty
much
the best Floyd song that Floyd never recorded. Goddamn, that's a track and a
half.
"Thanks To You" might be the only time in rock history anyone tried
to
rewrite Zeppelin's "Thank You." Unsurprisingly, it's better than the
studio
version of that disaster, though not the live version on "BBC
Sessions"
cause that version whips ass.
"Maximum Dream For Evel Kinevel" makes no fucking sense at all and
still
rules.
"Love Yer Brain"...aaaauugggghhhh, bad idea. The song itself is ok if
totally amateurish, but do we need all that extra clanging? For three
minutes? No we do not.
The "Ode To C.C." tracks are trippy as hell. And the second one is an
actual
song!
"Can't Exist" and "Prescription: Love" are both okay, but
nothing truly
special. Ok, the last half of "Prescription: Love" is great, but did
we need
that long and incompetent guitar soloing intro? It's not offensive or even
bad, but it does take away from the song.
Basically, this album is proof that if you are talented enough and have
enough of a strong constitution, you can take enough drugs to fry the
circuits of the average Marriott Hotel and come out with a great album. It's
an 8 or an A-. So funny
Telepathic Surgery (1989)
Rating: 7
Best Song: “Chrome Plated Suicide”
For this one, the Lips find themselves stuck
in a holding pattern, continuing in the “anything goes, regardless of whether
it actually sounds good or makes any damn sense” mode of Oh My Gawd!!!, but with a batch of material a bit weaker than its predecessor,
although this is chiefly due to the lack of something as OR-FUCKING-GASMIC as
“On Million Billionth of the Best Lost Pink Floyd Song Ever.” Nothing really new at ALL in
the first three tracks, really. “Drug
Machine in Heaven” contains sections that I SWEAR are just lifted from the
“Girl Gone Bad”-ripoff parts of “Prescription: Love,” “Right Now,” despite its
interesting guitar intro, is most notable for a bassline directly taken from
Gary Numan’s “Cars” (seriously, pay attention when they leave Ivins alone for a
second…”Here in my car, I feel safest of all…”), and “Michael, Time to Wake Up”
is a little filler nothing in the vein of “Ode to that Awesome Dude in Poison
Who Rules So Much I Just Wanna Fill Him with my Love Cauliflower Even Though He
Actually Sucks and I’m Actually Straight.”
There are a couple of instances where the brilliant songwriting skills of these chaps
begin to shine through, most notably “Chrome Plated Suicide,” “Last Drop of
Morning Dew,” and the first minute and a half of “Begs and Achin’” (which sounds
JUST like some of the more upbeat rockers from In a Priest Driven Ambulance,
except for the stupid descending part of the riff), but that’s all you’re gonna
get of new-ish stuff: snippets. The
most notable parts of this record are the fact that, somehow, it’s MORE crazy,
out-there and weird than Oh My
Gawd!!!, and that it has, without
a doubt, the greatest collection of song-titles ever laid down on one
album. “
There are so many ideas on this record, but so few of them are fully focused, developed, or
sifted through. Just like Oh My Gawd!!!, they’re all just splattered right there onto the vinyl (or, in my
case, disc 3 of compilation) for everyone to see without much thought. And it’s even worse this time. Not that it’s actively bad. Who doesn’t love random orchestral samples in
the middle of sloppy, catchy psych-rockers like “Fryin’ Up” (Great line:
“Fryin’ up on Easter Sunday!”), as well as about 15 other places? Oh
My Gawd!!! only did this like once
or twice. Apparently that wasn’t
enough. And how about a 20-minute sound
collage? Sure! The version I have (on the compilation) only
has about a three-minute edit of “Hell’s Angels Cracker Factory,” but I highly
doubt the rest of it veers off much from the motorcycle noises, fuzzy riffing,
fill-heavy drumming, feedback noise, orchestral samples (AGAIN!), and woman
making weird chanting noises that are here in my little excerpt. And “U.F.O. Story?” Sure!
What the fuck, right? I love
hearing Wayne telling his friends how he told Michael Stipe about the time he
saw six U.F.O.’s when he was four years old (flying in formation!!), followed by some guitar noise and three minutes of piano stuff that
sounds like an extra-creepy classical sonata (by the way, good GOD that’s unexpected. Probably the
best idea
Yup!
An orchestral sample!
If you’re looking for an album to be
completely confused after listening to, this is probably a good one to pick up. It has EVERYTHING, if by “everything,” you
mean “every rock cliché you could ever ask for.” “Chrome Plated Suicide” thinks it’s
“Strawberry Fields Forever” or “Over the Hills and Far Away” with its
fade-out/fade-in at the end. The end of
“Begs and Achin’” (and consequently the end of the record) is one of those
drawn out, “lighter-waving” codas you all know and love (and people clap at the
end like a real concert!). Sound
collages. Weird stories. Piano instrumentals. Zeppelin homages. Artsy linking tracks. Moody bass-filled quiet nothing tracks
(“Miracle on
Bonus tracks! We’ve got live tracks up the porkhole this time. “
GoFunBurnMan13@aol.com writes:
First of all, great job on these
reviews. I've personally only heard both
the double/triple album compilation things, and reading through your
dissertations on them made me wish I hadn't sold all of them back to the store
for some quick ca$h.: ( Still, of all FIVE of those discs, I seem to
recall Telepathic Surgery being the one that I was the most fond of. It
ain't brilliant, it ain't genius, and it ain't anywhere NEAR perfect...it's
just fun. And a big THANK YOU for pointing out the "Cars"
ripoff in the bassline of "Right Now". Glad I'm not the only
one who ever noticed that. "UFO Story" I've always seen as the
Lips' homage to "A Saucerful Of Secrets": starting out with a moody,
foreboding intro, going into a disastrous noise section of destruction, and
ending with a pretty little keyboard-based outro(only without choir vocals).
But I know you don't like that song, so I'll drop the issue.
I must be the only guy in the world who loves their live cover of "
Aw fuck it, I'll just download & burn 'em all. I've spent enough
money on this one band. Keep the good shit coming!
In A Priest Driven Ambulance (1990)
Rating: 9
Best Song: “Five Stop Mother
Superior Rain”
The first lineup change(s) for the Lips, and
their first real change in sound. First
off, Richard “The Developmentally Retarted Drummer Man” English is gone from
behind the skins, replaced by Nathan Roberts, who doesn’t really bring much to
the table, but doesn’t take anything off
it either, unlike Mr.
English. This isn’t really the important
change, but as a pseudo-drummer myself, it’s the one I feel like mentioning
first. The BOIG one is the addition of a
second guitarist to help out
Anyway, what Mr. Donahue enables the
Lips to do is make their music much more interesting (I need to
find a synonym for that…) and layered. He
does this mostly by just adding a bunch of swooshy, fuzzy feedback noises all
over stuff…but WHAT noises! Listen to
the driving hard rock ferocity of “Unconsciously Screamin’,” for instance. A few years ago, it’d probably sound just
like “Begs and “Achin’” or some crap (albeit with a better riff and chorus),
but here it’s transformed into a POWERHOUSE MONSTER OF PURE ROCK AND ROLL
POWER.
Anyway, I’d be lying if I said the
songwriting hadn’t advanced also since the band’s last few albums, too, but
that’s probably only true for, say, 2/3 of the album. “Unconsciously Screamin’” is farging brilliant, and I’m gonna echo Capn Marvel’s sentiment that it’s probably their
best ever pure rocker (or best pure rocker pre-Transmissions, depending
on your definition of “pure rocker”).
The opening “Shine on Sweet Jesus” ain’t no slouch either, and provides
the first example of the Lips’ repeated (and silly!) use of the vocal
pitchshifter, as Barry White with emphysema appears to do a harmony with Wayne
on the chorus. And “Take Meta Mars”
rocks and rolls and grooves and moves along to a funkadelic (apparently riffed
off from Can, says
But that’s just the rocking
stuff. The band had laid down some nice softer material before, I guess, like “Godzilla Flick” and,
um…well, “Godzilla Flick” was probably their best softer acoustic song up to this
point, so maybe they hadn’t. The point
is that this is no longer the case, as first exemplified by the epic-sounding
(but not epic-length) “Rainin’ Babies,” which starts off softly before building
via psycho-loud drums and feedback tastiness into the most bombastic thing the
Lips ever put to tape outside of “Do You Realize??” and like half of The Soft Bulletin. The brilliant, epic-sounding
(as well as epic-length) “Five Stop Mother Superior Rain,” my personal favorite
here, starts off like something straight from Sticky Fingers (love that
trumpet!) before periodically using that “feedback guitar noise added to
acoustic strummer = buildup” method that gets me every damn time it’s used on
this album (i.e. twice). And “There You
Are” is just a simple, quiet, affecting, gorgeous little acoustic piece of
relaxation that you would have NEVER guessed the Lips were capable of penning
after their first three records. And it
has crickets chirping! Que bueno!
The remaining tracks don’t really
show the songwriting advance I half-heartedly mentioned two paragraphs ago, but
only “Stand in Line” doesn’t do anything for me.
It attempts to be sort of like “Rainin’ Babies,” I think, but has next
to no goddamn melody and goes absolutely nowhere, so fuck it. “Mountain Side” and especially “God Walks
Among Us Now,” however, are songs clearly made better solely by the newfangled Lips style of production, and they are absolutely
DRENCHED in scrumptiously delicious guitar noise to compensate for their
melodic deficiencies. I think “Mountain
Side” is a little iffy and overlong, but the end of “God Walks Among Us Now” is
positively fucking superb, as even Wayne’s little boy screeching voice gets
enveloped by The Noise. Like it’s THE
BLOB. And, finally, they close with a cover
of “(What a) Wonderful World,” which really shows what, ideologically, the Lips
are all about. There’s no sarcasm or
irony involved, but no cheese either.
Just a good, hopelessly optimistic song filtered through the Lips’
hopeless optimistic vision. And cool
keyboard tone. And a fitting ending to a
great album that doesn’t really sound like anything else they’ve produced,
apart from the presence of guitar fuzz noise.
Their first three can be lumped together, and their next three after
sort of can be too, all major-label releases with that weird “acid-bubblegum”
(as characterized by real critics who get paid) aesthetic everyone seems to
love. Here they’re still a real ROCK
band, and, at least for one album, druggy loopiness doesn’t seem to
play that big a part in
There are about 8,000 bonus tracks
on the The Day They Finally Shot a
Hole in the Jesus Egg compilation,
so I’m gonna skip most of it. The bulk
of the second disc is the Mushroom
Tapes, a bunch of 4-track demos
from 1989, mostly of songs that would end up on Priest, all of which sound
like poo. I like the new wah-wah guitar
line in “Unconsciously Screamin,’” and the feedback-drenched, decidedly non-acoustic version of “There You Are” is interesting, but the rest adds
nothing to nothing. I will, however
mention that one of the disc 2 extra tracks, “She’s Gone Mad,” at the end
spoofs Pink Floyd’s “Brain Damage” and The Wall AT THE SAME TIME,
which is funny. But, yeah, fork the rest
of this stuff in the maizehole, and a pox on me for not getting a regular
single CD version of this album and saving a few bucks.
Oh, the record is also a concept
album about Jesus or something. If you
wanna know more about this, ask Mel Gibson.
Hit To Death In The Future Head (1992)
Rating: 8
Best Song: “Frogs”
The Lips, on the strength of their first
album that people outside of me and other retards might actually want to buy, ascend to major label status, and take advantage of this fact by
employing EVERY INSTRUMENT AND NOISE-MAKING MACHINE IN THE HISTORY OF RECORDED
TIME at some point in this record. I
just have a burned copy (so I don’t have to actively turn the album off after
track 10…if you buy the record, you should probably do that…), but, having
perused the liner notes of the real CD, I can say that it is quite ridiculous,
and, although more or less all of these touches and additions are cool, I feel that the quality of the album (or just its production, maybe)
was compromised a little by Wayne’s newfound freedom to say “hey, let’s put a
power-tool machine here, or maybe an autoharp!”
The songs are great for the most part, yeah, but the guitars are weakly
mixed to make room for all the new stuff, and everything seems a little too
subdued and quiet for a Lips album, which I think comes as a result of some
extra-instrument mucker-uppery. The
energy that was so intoxicating sometimes on Priest (e.g.
“Unconsciously Screamin’”) is missing here, and even though
And this problem is evident right from
the beginning, with the opener “Talkin’ Bout the Smiling Deathporn Immortality
Blues (Everyone Wants to Live Forever)” (Yes, the crazy song titles are
back!). It’s a good song, no doubt, but
it’s no “Shine on Sweet Jesus,” even if they both use that cool pitchshifter
thing (“Ooooo wah wah, ooooo wah wah, oooooo wah wah, ooooooooooooo!”). It’s a rocker, but it doesn’t rock, you see, and they haven’t yet reached that Consistent Total Pop
Nirvana stage they’d get to one album later, so their rockers DO need to rock a
little bit, for the most part, to really grab my dick and yank like they mean
it. “The Magician vs. the Headache” does
this “rocking” thing a little better, but, being in the second half of the
record, it suffers a little from the melodic deficiency problems that cropped
up at the tail end of Priest.
More cool pitchshifter use, though!
I can’t get enough of that damn thing.
What you’ve gotta look for here is
signs of maturity and that Total Pop Nirvana that would later envelop the
group, and a couple songs here DO totally fit that bill. The string flourishes in “Hit me Like You Did
the First Time” TOTALLY remind me of Magical
Mystery Tour or something like
that, and that “Come on now!” chorus is catchier than the gout. “Gingerale Afternoon (The Astrology of a
Saturday)” and “Frogs” both PERFECTLY combine absurd pop catchiness with
insanely interesting and COOL production touches as well. The former’s “Feelin’ like I’m leavin’ much
too soooooon” hook will drag you in, and the latter’s, well, everything hook will grab you and not
let go, especially that harmonized
“I’m lookin’ at the skyyyyyyy! I’m
waitin’ on the raiiiiiin!” chorus. And
don’t forget that frigged-out guitar-abuse “solo” in there. Fuckdammit, that thing is cool. Probably the most energetic song here as
well, as well as the best-mixed electric guitar usage (probably not a
coincidence).
Concerning the less-“rocking” (a
word which will from now on be slowly filtered out of the Lips’ vocabulary)
tunes, while “The Sun” and “Halloween on the Barbary Coast” (I know it’s not
quiet or acoustic or whatever, but it’s SLOW, so I’m grouping it here, ‘kay?)
have never done too much for me, the remaining songs are most definitely splurgetastic.
“Felt Good to Burn,” “You Have to Be Joking (Autopsy of the Devil’s
Brain)” (my favorite quiet thing here) and “Hold Your Head” are masterpieces of
atmospherically druggy headphone mixing technology, and deserve to be heard by
each and every person reading this page who has not yet done so. There’s so much MATURITY on display with
these tunes. They don’t sound a damn
thing like the slow, quiet songs from Priest, but they still
rule in their own way. “You Have to Be
Joking” is the “There You Are” of this record, just gliding airily by on a carpet
of bongos, light acoustic plucking, softly-mixed pianos, and some other
atmospheric percussion implements of indeterminate origin. Fantastic song, it is, and every bit as
brilliant as “Frogs,” even though they share exactly zero things in common.
It’s easy to forget this album when
comparing it to the ones that precede and follow it (lord knows I often do),
but, despite not being quite energetic enough for this era of Lips goodness
(bar a few tunes, especially “Frogs,” which is so frickin’ awesome should
probably just jump ahead two albums and join Clouds so all the
Aristophanes references can be in one place), mixed that strongly, or all that
cohesive, it’s still a damn good album.
I mean, it is still the Flaming Lips, right?
Oh, and no more bonus track extra
fun paragraphs the rest of the way (unless you count half an hour of industrial
noise as a “bonus track”). HA! All you have to look forward to is another
regular stupid review, just like starting today, my 22nd birthday, all I have
to look forward to every year is another regular stupid birthday, although my
girlfriend Ma Li apparently sprouted another tooth today, or so she tells
me. I get another year older, and she
gets another tooth. This makes
sense…how?
And no, I know she’s growing new
teeth, but she’s not underage. Who do
you think I am, R. Kelly?
Transmissions From The Satellite Heart (1993)
Rating: 9
Best Song: “Turn It On”
More lineup changes! This band is turning into YES! Minus the overwhelming fruitiness, I
guess. Anyhoo, half the band is again
replaced, with the most important addition (seriously, no drumming bias here, I
swear…) being previously-mentioned-in-the-intro new skin-pounder Steven
Drozd. I don’t know if it’s him or the
mixing, but good god are his drums LOOOOUUUUUUD. And GREAT!
He’s superb. Definitely brings
stuff to the table, as does new second
guitarist/noisemaker Ronald Jones, who looks exactly like Carrot Top if Carrot
Top were actually black and had black hair, if you can picture that frightening
sight in your mind.
And the new musical direction of this new group of players? Well, to go forward, one must sometimes go
back, and that’s exactly what they’ve done here, stripping off many of the “OH
MY FUCKING GOD! We’re on a major label
now? So we actually have, like, a
recording budget?” extra goodies that were littered all over Hit to Death (and mucked it up some), and so, instrumentally, the record sounds
much more like Priest. The
rockers have guitar riffs, the slow doohickies don’t have 1,000 extra
instruments for “atmosphere.” The Lips
are a rock band again.
But not totally. See, even if
they’ve returned mostly to the instrumental basis of Priest, their songwriting continues to develop further in the direction shown
by Hit to Death,
becoming more poppy, more happy,
and generally more loopy. In other
words, more Lippy. Whereas the rockers
on Priest thrashed and burned with fuzzy guitar noise
tastiness, the rockers here hop, skip, and jump on perfect melodic pop songwriting
augmented by even cooler fuzzy guitar noise tastiness, and this is
the first record that probably won’t make Yoshimi fans go “Huh? WHAAAAAA?” upon first hearing it. And the songs have finally reached that
Consistent Total Pop Nirvana stage I alluded to in the last review. The opener “Turn it On” is nearly perfect and a serious contender for my favorite Lips song of all time (or
would be if “Do You Realize??” didn’t exist), with one of the catchiest riffs
ever thrown at Donald Rumsfeld’s lack of moral decency, one of the most fantastically happy melodies I’ve ever heard (normally this is where I’d quote the
lyrics to the melody line, but our entire Internet is down right now, so I
can’t access the page where I get the lyrics or waste time checking
other people’s away messages on AIM.
Yeah Harvard…), and a headphone-crazy feedback freakout at the end that
has to be heard to be believed.
Looking at that song and plenty of others, I’d say this is probably the
best Flaming Lips album from a pure guitar standpoint.
There’s probably their best batch of riffs on the rockers (Besides “Turn
it On,” we’ve got “Pilot Can at the Queer of God,” “She Don’t Use Jelly” (Steve
Sanders’ favorite), “Be My Head”…), and the use of feedback/noise/fuzz stuff is
EASILY the best you’ll find on a Flaming Lips album. See, they didn’t really eliminate the extra touches from Hit
to Death. They just replaced them with more feedback
overdubs, and it’s completely fucking brilliant all the way through (no
mucker-uppery here!), especially since the songwriting has advanced to such a
point of consistency that the fuzz doesn’t need to carry any songs, just
augment them. It’s like Wayne and Ronald
are creating symphonies out of nothing but feedback. I swear “Be My Head” has like 6 or 7
overdubbed guitars, and maybe two of them are playing coherent notes or
chords. But, see, it’s catchy. And if fuzz can be pretty,
well, it’s pretty too.
But fork the spoogetastic production and instrumentation on this
thing. Let’s return to the songs, which constitute the best batch of tunes the Lips had yet come up
with (and the 2nd best they ever have as of this review). I know I keep mentioning “Be My Head” (and
it’s not even my favorite song here!), but the “Be my heaaad! And I’ll be yooouuuuurs!” is almost beyond catchy. And there was a reason “She Don’t Use Jelly” was a novelty hit both on the radio and at the
Peach Pit, and that is it’s just a great fucking song, subject matter be damned
(I mean, who the hell puts Vaseline on toast?
What the hell is
But minor complaints. This is an
absolutely fantastic album, and I really can’t recommend it
highly enough as a GREAT Lips starting point if you want to get into their
entire career. It has equal parts Priest rocking guitar power and Soft
Bulletin/Yoshimi poptastic songwriting, combined with some of the best use of guitar
noise I’ve ever heard. Combine all this
with the fact that it’s the last Lips album to include those nice, soft
acoustic tunes that I (and, hell, maybe you too) know and love, and I’d call
this the Lips’ “quintessential” album if I were George Starostin and I actually
gave a crap about that. The second best
Lips album, and the third best, um, “thing they’ve released,” but probably your
best place to start if you wanna know what the Lips are and were all
about.
Clouds Taste Metallic (1995)
Rating: 10
Best Song: “Christmas At The Zoo”
The culmination of all things Lips. I have been in awe of this album since the first time I listened to it last summer (as I listen now, this is probably the 20th time I’ve popped it in already), I continue to be in awe, and I probably will still be in awe in another twenty years. Everything good about pre-“let’s completely fuck with our sound” Lips is contained in this record. Just like Hit to Death was a step forward from Priest, this is a similar step forward from Transmissions, as the Lips bring back all the extra goop employed in Hit to Death and use lots of fun extra instruments instead of clearly-defined guitar riffs, but they don’t make the same mistakes they made on that record. The production is superb, the energy and fun are astronomically high, the songwriting quality is un-fucking-believable, and, well, the album? It’s just AWESOME. So excuse me if I seem a little less coherent than usual during this review (not that I’m ever really coherent…).
This album
is stunning. It stuns you right from the
first piano notes of the opening “The Abandoned Hospital Ship” (No more loud
rocker to start things off! To be
honest, this song sounds more like a prologue or intro to me than actual song,
but whatever it’s supposed to do, it does it just about perfectly) to the
closing glockenspiel of “Bad Days (Aurally Excited Version),” this album never
lets up with its incessant combination of jawdroppingly perfect songwriting,
astonishing production, and total, unadulterated happy loopiness. I mean, the first track after “Hospital Ship”
is called “Psychiatric Explorations of the Fetus With Needles.” “Cats killing dogs! Pigs eating rats!” And
I could probably write a paragraph about every song here, but I’ll try my best to be brief. “Placebo Headwound,” “This Here Giraffe,” and “Brainville” almost blend together into a suite (highlighting the only complaint one could make about this record, a lack of diversity. No more “Plastic Jesus” acoustic interludes to be found here or anything, but the songs are so insanely great I just don’t fucking care) before leading into the epic, genius, hilarious, tragic “Guy Who Got a Headache and Accidentally Saves the World,” about, in the words of the news announcer dude who comes in at the end, “the boy wonder who saves the planet but destroys his ever-enlarging brain in the process.” The ending part around this little quote is quite possibly the most uplifting thing in the history of the world, with crowd cheering noises, about 800 harmony vocals, guitar craziness, and a bunch of other stuff I can’t even identify because I’m too caught up in the EXPERIENCE to bother deciphering every damn instrument being overdubbed.
And hey! The second half’s not too shabby, either! “When You Smile” is the only song that doesn’t quite meet the standard of the rest of the material on the record, but, I mean, it’d still be one of the better tunes on EVERY OTHER FLAMING LIPS ALBUM EVER RECORDED, so I’m not gonna complain. Drozd is absolutely booking along here, as he does throughout the entire album, really (the guy is fantastic…his actual parts aren’t that complicated, but the way he does them is so brilliant. I wanna be able to drum exactly like him). “Kim’s Watermelon Gun” and “Lightning Strikes the Postman,” along with “Psychiatric Explorations of the Fetus with Needles” (Honestly, I could just type out that song title all day…over and over…), are the only songs here that can truly constitute ROCK music (this is a super-happy perfect pop album that just happens to have guitar fuzz noise and John Bonham drums, and it does not “rock” in the Led Zeppelin or Rolling Stones sense). “Kim” does it with speed (and some cool quiet stop interludes) and “Postman” does it with sheer VOLUME and POWER. The point at the end of it when all the production swooshes away for the “and it’s hard to read the writing through the flames” line is fucking transcendent. In between them, if “They Punctured My Yolk” were licensed to be the theme song for NASA, this country would give a whole lot more of a crap about the space program (at least I would). By the end, you literally feel like you’re in outer space. “Goodbye goodbye, look how the clouds burst!” Fucking crap. This band can absolutely kill you emotionally when they want.
And that
leaves my favorite track. Not about a
guy who saves the world, or travelling to outer space, or anything empirically
uplifting, “Christmas at the Zoo” is probably the best example in the Lips
catalog of why I love Wayne Coyne, and why you should too. The plot: Wayne and his friends break into
the zoo on Christmas eve, hoping to free the animals. They get in and open up all the cages, but
the animals, for some reason, refuse to leave the zoo. And somehow he can make this utterly
captivating and nearly fucking life-affirming. “All of the animals agree they’re not happy
at the zoo! But they prefer to save
themselves, they seem to think they could!
The elephants, orangutans, all the birds and kangaroos all say ‘thanks,
but no thanks man, to be concerned is good!’”
And then there are like Santa’s sleigh Christmas bells at the end, right
at the “It started to snow on Christmas eve!” line! And how
The last
two songs, “Evil Will Prevail” and “Bad Days,” are really more codas than
anything else, but each is pretty much a four-minute orgasm by itself. Not their fault I’m still humming about
kangaroos and orangutans. And for those
of you who are curious, the Internet is still down at H-town, and I typed all
the lyrics in this review purely from memory.
I’ve only been in possession of this record for about six months, but in
that time I’ve come to cherish it, love it, and even stump for it (I’ve
commanded about 20-30 of my friends to get it at some point since this school
year started…I don’t think any of them have).
On the regular single-disc format, they’ve never done better, and I’m
pretty much convinced they never will.
It’s up in my “best album of the 90’s discussion” now, with Nevermind
and Siamese Dream and Mellon Collie (with which I now freely
debate which is the best album of 1995) and OK Computer and whatnot. Transmissions is still better as an
overview of everything about the Lips, but this is EASILY their pinnacle
(I’m not counting Zaireeka here, by the way, since it’s not even really
an album), and I’m pretty sure
Zaireeka (1997)
Rating: 10
Best Song: Impossible.
Different every time you listen. Literally. Anything but “How Will We Know (Futuristic
Crashendos).”
Right,
like I’m not giving this one a 10.
I’m Mr “Easily Impressed by Headphone Studio Tricks” Man! DUH!!!
If you know what this is, you can go and skip to the next paragraph (the
“real” analysis (idiotic fan-boy ramblings)), but if you don’t, please allow me
to BLOW YOUR MIND. What this is, see, is
one “album” (term used very loosely) of about 45 minutes in length, but
recorded on four CD’s, each one containing different parts of each song. Like, you know how a normal “stereo” CD is
mixed for two speakers? This is mixed
for eight, the idea being that you can put four stereos on the four
sides of a room, insert a disc into each one, press play, and more or less have
your face totally and completely MELTED THE FUCK OFF.
Anyway, what’s great about this “record” is that, depending on what discs you choose to play or what stereos you choose to use, the listening experience is different every single time. Counting just playing one disc by itself, there are a grand total of FIFTEEN ways to listen to the “album,” and this number becomes infinite when you consider that no two stereos play CD’s exactly alike. And when I say there are fifteen different ways to experience Zaireeka, I MEAN it. Even playing ONE disc will give you isolated snippets of face melting (it’s not just random sounds, in any case), and just TWO discs will periodically blow your mind and totally change any preconceived notions you might have about how music can be experienced. Picture vocal harmonies and drum solos that not only sway from headphone to headphone, but physically move AROUND you, from one part of a room to another. This is, quite possibly, the coolest thing anyone has ever come up with in the history of music.
The songs? The songs themselves are immaterial. It’s all about the sound and the experience, plus they’re all meandering art-rock suite things anyway, totally unlike anything the Lips have recorded before or since. But that’s the way the music HAD to be, wasn’t it? Expertly written pop songs wouldn’t work in this format. It’d be a waste. No, for a format such as this, you need slow, arty, meandering music you can INHABIT as opposed to just enjoy, like Pink Floyd or something (an influence I sense here, by the way), because this is music that must be ACTIVELY listened to, due to the multiple stereo problem. You have to keep running back and forth, pausing this one and fast-forwarding that one to keep the CD’s in sync. All of this would be annoying if the music were BORING meandering art-rock suite things, but no! They’re EXCITING meandering art-rock suite things. All eight speakers converge on one solemn organ chord at the end of “The Train Runs Over the Camel but is Derailed by the Gnat.” “March of the Rotten Vegetables” contains the freakiest, most insane drum solo in the history of music, as multiple Drozds (Drozd’s?) bash out frightening Bonzo-loud rhythms that come at you from all directions. The closing “The Big Ol’ Bug is the New Baby Now” ends with a chorus of dogs barking from everywhere (my dog loved that one the first time I played this).
Those are the most memorable things, I guess, but it’s tough for me to describe the music in very specific terms because, I mean, I’ve only been able to listen to it on multiple CD’s a couple of isolated times. But this isn’t about specific aspects of the music, or whether that’s a great keyboard tone or guitar line. It’s about having your face melted. It’s about active participation, like how three of the four discs contain special frequencies during “How Will We Know (Futuristic Crashendos)” that may make some people “become disoriented, confused, or nauseated,” the liner notes say. There’s even a warning about the frequencies ON THE CD COVER, and I can say from personal experience that it’s no bullshit, because I haven’t ONCE listened to this album without having to leave the room within ten seconds of the track starting. I literally feel like I’m gonna throw up. And not like how I feel when I’m listening to Creed. This isn’t disgust. This is physical nausea. This is fucking ACTIVE PARTICIPATION, man.
This also isn’t for everybody, and despite the fact that it’s my favorite Lips release, it’s not like I’m gonna tell everyone to go out and buy it RIGHT NOW, simply for logistical reasons. Maybe they don’t have four CD players. Or three. Or TWO (I’m sure anyone can scrounge up two, though). Maybe they don’t like the idea of running around the room trying to get the different CD’s to play in sync (which you will have to do). Maybe they don’t like the fact that to FULLY experience the “album” (i.e. having all four CD’s play together) requires other people to help (you can have a Zaireeka party!). I STILL haven’t been able to do this. I’ve gotten three going once (one stereo had a remote control, which is the only way you can get even three going without help), and it was just about the coolest thing I’ve ever experienced, but maybe this isn’t enough for you. I dunno. All I’m saying is that to listen to this record requires effort, and to listen to it as fully as possible requires not only effort, but also assistance, and you cannot physically just stick the record in, sit back, and enjoy (unless you put in just one CD, which can still be cool, mind you, just not “mind-blowing”). If this is a problem for you, don’t get it, but also remember you’re a pussy douchebag retard.
This is the most unique experience you can have in popular music, and if you’re one of those hearty few who don’t mind the logistical nightmare listening to it can turn into, there are very few things (not just albums, things) I would recommend as highly as this. The day I finally enlist some of my friends and get around to playing all four CD’s together will be one of the coolest days of my life, as long as I remember to leave the room during track 6, so I don’t puke all over everybody.
David Dickson (ddickso2@uccs.edu) writes:
YEAAH! (Howard Dean
intonation) Agree with the 10 on this classic,
definitely. A landmark of psychedelia, '90's album or no '90's album.
Mindblowing, epic, and intriguing as hell.
And GET THIS! I DON'T HAVE FOUR STEREOS! AND I'VE NEVER HEARD THE
FOUR-DISC VERSION! I just heard this pirated single-disc MP3
thingamajig some guy mixed together by synchronizing all four CD files
into one big mash. I'll tell ya, my computer speakers nearly blew out
from all the compressed sound rushing into them at once. But guess
what? It STILL gets weird and out of rhythm from time to time!! And
it still RULES!
I think the thing I like most about this album is its complete and
utter discarding of the credo the Flaming Lips followed on the three
other albums I've heard by them (Transmissions From the Satellite
Heart, The Soft Bulletin, and Yoshimi). This bright, sweet, and
utterly POP sensibility endeared to them by PET SOUNDS, dammit. Look,
their very NAME is psychedelic-sounding, right? They started out as
the indie jam band from HELL, right? So why are they fooling around
with Beatlesy contrivances?
the Sixties!
The Lips sure as hell ain't fooling around on Zaireeka. Here, they
finally show some ambition to create something that MATTERS, in a
permanent sense. Or at least SOUNDS like it. The other three albums
are only great in the sense of "Oh woe to the nines popular music
SUCKS nowadays these guys are such a breath of fresh air compared to
Nickelback aren't they????" I refuse to like modern underground
groups on that basis. Zaireeka appeals to me for reasons entirely
separate from the year they are released in.
AND the format they're released in, for that matter! Jeez, I've only
heard this on one CD, and I STILL love it? SOMETHING in the water
does not compute. I'm guessing it sounds even better on multiple
machines. (By the way, that "nauseating" sound on track 6
doesn't
affect me for some reason. Maybe it's because I'm hearing it from one
computer speaker, rather than eight big boom ones.)
The Beatles, nearly-perfect as they are, never created quite as good a
piece of psycedelia as this, and neither did Pink Floyd. They were
too obsessed with Stuart Little at the time in question. This is as
mind-blowing as anything released in 1967 and then some.
The Soft Bulletin (1999)
Rating: 8
Best Song: “Waitin’ For A Superman”
This
is probably the only Lips album I’d call “overrated” (it’s tough to find an
album of theirs that isn’t underrated…damn lack of commercial
success…yeah, Good Charlotte isn’t the worst band in the world, I swear…), but
it’s still plenty good, just not “maybe the best album of the decade,” or
whatever its review on the All Music Guide said (which, ofcourse, still
didn’t give the album 5 stars). The
record also marks ANOTHER complete shift in sound priorities, as
I do miss the guitar noise, but the main reason I only stuck an 8 up there is that this record is sluggish, and not because it doesn’t have enough guitars in it (but it doesn’t). A couple of songs TOTALLY catch fire and take me to a place very few bands can, and isolated sections of a couple others do as well (the faster section in the middle of the multi-part “The Spark that Bled,” the middle of “Suddenly Everything Has Changed,” which is basically thirty seconds of a jaunty, country-ish pure musical orgasm in the middle of four minutes of non-jaunty, non-country-ish pure musical boring), but the overall effect of the album is, well, a little underwhelming. The opener “Race for the Prize” is absolutely top-notch, “Buggin,’” in which Wayne somehow takes a song about mosquitoes and makes it the happiest, most life-affirming thing in the world (sound familiar? I bet he could do this with a song about anal warts. It’s a fucking GIFT), is pure super-happy pop bliss awesomeness, “Waitin’ For a Superman” is the most blatantly commercial song the Lips have ever produced, as well as one of the most profound, gorgeous, beautiful, and stirring, and the only thing that prevented it from being a hit was the fact that it doesn’t suck (there’s no reason that it didn’t become the ultimate “serious pseudo-ballad” of 1999), and “The Gash,” whose vocals are handled completely by what sounds like a choir of angels on hallucinogenic drugs, is fucking terrific, but nothing else quite burns the motherfucker DOWN like these standouts.
Nothing here is bad, either, but a lot of the rest is just “good,” and a few (such as the two instrumentals, which leave the roughly same lasting impression as a nice bowl of unflavored oatmeal) are just…boring. “A Spoonful Weighs a Ton” has this absolutely BAD-ASS part where Drozd gets shoved into one headphone and more or less smashes your eardrum apart, but “The Spiderbite Song” is…boring. “What is the Light” is a damn catchy tune, especially the parts where Drozd comes in (you know, the songs and parts of songs I like best here are consistently when Drozd is let loose to bash. He SINGLEHANDEDLY provides energy. What a fucking drummer, man!). “Feeling Yourself Disintegrate” is absolutely gorgeous and harrowing, but it’s also too long and draggy, and did I mention those two instrumentals? Yeah. Again, they don’t BLOW, but they aren’t really good either. I question the whole theory behind the Flaming Lips’ writing instrumentals, actually. Wayne Coyne is one of the best songwriters around today. He creates perfect pop melodies around songs that can make you laugh, make you think, or make you do both, and he chooses here, TWICE, do dick around with his orchestral synth-strings for four minutes. Sure. Whatever.
Except
possibly in “Buggin’” (which is vintage Lips all the way, just with
different instrumentation), all the cool stuff I said about the Lips in my Clouds
Taste Metallic review has been excised here, and, goshdarnit, I don’t
appreciate it!
Anyway, finally, bear in mind that the only reason this review is filled with criticism is the otherworldly reputation this album has obtained from critics. It’s still a great album, and I actually like it more than Hit to Death, but it’s NOT their timeless pop masterpiece. CLOUDS TASTE METALLIC is their timeless pop masterpiece. Doozies.
Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots (2002)
Rating: 9
Best Song: “Do You Realize??”
First off, Ronald Jones left after Clouds and they’ve been a trio since Zaireeka, which might be why Wayne chose to abandon the guitar noise in the first place (I still claim it’s that Wayne thought it was impossible to follow up Clouds without completely fucking with everything). I probably should have mentioned this earlier. Like in the Zaireeka review, for instance.
Anyway,
this one here presents yet ANOTHER complete change in sound, as orchestral pop
played on synths is replaced by electronic pop, also played on synths
(as well as occasional snippets of acoustic guitar). Now, heaven knows I’m not wont to “dig” the
techno music the kids love nowadays (the only time I wanna hear the word
“trance” in conversation is when someone’s getting hypnotized), but damn it all
if this isn’t one GREAT fucking album.
The reason? The loopiness is
back! Or, if not completely back,
With one
super-glaring absolutely MONUMENTAL exception, a lot of the best material here
occurs within
The rest of the album (WITH ONE FUCKING HUMONGOUSLY LARGE EXCEPTION) can’t quite live up to the promise of the title suite, but many of the songs left are still superb, even though I actually don’t too much like the pretty, yet draggy and meandering “In the Morning of the Magicians,” which sounds like it’d work better in Zaireeka format. The next three tunes, though? POP-FUCKING-TASTIC! “Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell,” “Are You a Hypotist??” and “It’s Summertime” may just be electronic pop songs, but WHAT electronic pop songs! As with the rest of the album, the production is just astounding, and the number of sounds that pop in and out, left and right, up and down in the mix always surprises me even after 15 listens (or however many freaking times I’ve gone through this thing). “Ego Tripping” (with it’s wonderful “I must have been tripping!” line) and “It’s Summertime” (Ooooo! Birds chirping! Ooooo! Great guitar line!) are definitely light fare, but “Are You a Hypnotist??” is not at all, and uses big, fat choir overdubs to build an atmosphere of DOOM that would be scary as hell if the Flaming Lips weren’t prominently involved, and so it ends up just being catchy, fun, and brilliant. Unfortunately, the last two songs (“All We Have is Now,” which has phenomenal lyrics but nothing else, and “Approaching Pavonis Mons by Balloon (Utopia Planitia),” the second instrumental) are mind-numblingly boring (more so than ANYTHING on The Soft Bulletin) and drift by without my ever noticing, thus letting the album peter out 10 times more disappointingly than Transmissions, but not enough to cost the record a 9 because “Do You Realize??” is one of the 10 best songs I’ve ever heard in my life.
Yes. If you haven’t heard the tune, all of you must download “Do You Realize??” RIGHT THE FUCK NOW. RIGHT. THE FUCK. NOW. It’s the only song I’ve ever heard that can absolutely SHATTER me emotionally. I realize “shatter” is a strong word, but I’m completely serious. I’m in a perfectly normal mood, blissfully humming through “It’s Summertime,” and three and a half minutes later I’m a complete emotional wreck (which might be why I can’t tell you a damn thing about the last two tunes, but I still choose to think it’s actually because they suck). It might be the most bombastic song ever produced. The loudest-mixed acoustic guitar strums in the history of music at the beginning, combined with the strings and fucking bells, let you know this won’t be an ordinary song, but then Wayne sings the lyrics, and…and…jesus. He starts off by singing “Do you realize…that you have the most beautiful face?”, which is emotionally jarring enough, but the chorus, I mean…
Do you realize that everyone you know someday will die?
But instead of saying all of your goodbyes,
Let them know you realize that life goes fast,
It’s hard to make the good things last,
You realize the sun doesn’t go down,
It’s just an illusion caused by the world spinning ‘round.
That last line, coming from the mouth of about 99% of the world, would just sound stupid and naïve. But Wayne Coyne is not 99% of the world.
I’m gonna tell you a little story about what this song, this album, and this band mean to me, and then I’ll let you go. Over Christmas break this year, my family and I were forced to put our dog down (he had become both incontinent and completely immobile, it was terrible). He was 12, so we’d had him since I was 9. I don’t REMEMBER not having a dog. When we got home from the vet that day, do you know what I did? I took my discman, went up to my room, closed the door, put in Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, and proceeded to sit and listen to Flaming Lips albums for the next three hours without once leaving my room except to go to the bathroom. I’ve never lost a truly close family member (well, closer than a grandparent), so having my dog die was a kind of grief I had never experienced before, and, at the time, the best way for me to deal with it was just to listen to Wayne Coyne sing for a while. Whether it’s about losing a loved one, zoo animals, or people who put Vaseline on toast, listening to their music just makes me feel happy, and, when you think about it, should anything else matter?
At War With The Mystics (2006)
Rating: 7
Best Song: “Free
Radicals”
I can’t remember the last time
I’d been as colossally disappointed with an album as I was when I finished
listening to this for the first time.
Where were the songs? Why was the
whole album a bunch of gimmicky sound effects and new-age keyboard atmospheric
nothing tracks? Why was
OK, so two weeks and countless listens later (I’ve had it in my car stereo the whole time on near-constant repeat) my attitude towards this record has obviously softened. It’s a good album. It’s nothing near more than that and it’s easily the Lips’ weakest since their first three when they didn’t really know what they were doing, but it’s a perfectly acceptable record album. There are basically two kinds of songs you’ll find on it (and this is a gross oversimplification, I know, but since when was I able to do anything else?): meandering keyboard and sound effect-heavy pseudo-muzak that has very little melody and depends heavily on the Lips’ arsenal of production jibbery-joo to be any good; and goofball and/or cutesy pop songs that quite often have far too much of said jibbery-joo going on to not be annoying but which at times (oddly) probably wouldn’t be very good at all with boring, simple production (witness the closer “Goin’ On” and its simple keyboard groove, then compare it to, say, “Waitin’ for a Superman” and see how much Wayne’s songwriting has slipped the last 5-10 years). What’s most annoying about the record is its sequencing, since the vast majority of the gooey atmospheric nothingness is stuck together in the middle of the album, making the listener mistakenly think that’s all he’s getting when he listens to this thing for the first time. “The Sound of Failure,” “My Cosmic Autumn Rebellion,” and “Vein of Stars” are such similar songs in tempo, tone, and instrumentation that putting them back-to-back-to-back at tracks 3-5 is just asinine, and it wasn’t the smartest idea to stick the album’s token instrumental (“The Wizard Turns On…”, which is actually pretty good and kinda reminds me of “Yoshimi (Part 2)”, only much more subdued) at track 6, and then tack a lengthy go-nowhere muzak coda onto the end of the silly pop song you’ve earmarked for track 7 (“It Overtakes Me”…though the acoustic guitar solo at the end of said coda is nice). If you have 20 minutes of keyboard muzak that sounds like “Approaching Pavonis Mons By Balloon” or the squishy boring sections of “In the Morning of the Magicians,” all I’m saying it’s probably not a good idea to stick all of it in a row. I mean, none of it’s really awful or anything. Just, you know, spread it out.
OK, now
that that’s out of the way, onto the silly pop songs. It certainly doesn’t help this album’s cause
that the first sound you hear is a really, really
effeminate chorus going “yeah yeah yeah yeah!” for twenty seconds. Not the best start. I mean, “The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song” is probably
the best-constructed song on the album in terms of melody, structure, etc., but
those chorus vocals are just bad. And the one overdubbed vocal in there that’s
really, really loud and really, really, really
off-key isn’t helping either. The melody
is so fucking ace (probably the only one that can match the Lips’ best stuff
from the past) and the sections without
these a-cappella interruptions are phenomenal (Jumpy! Rhythmic!
Guitars! Groovy!), but half the
song just pisses me off, and that’s that, and that’s not an isolated incident,
either (thought it’s certainly the worst offender). The Yoshimi-esque
bubbling keyboard interruptions don’t help “Haven’t Got a Clue” all that much,
and the fact that people are pointing to “The W.A.N.D.” as this great guitar
rock masterpiece just shows how desperate people are for Wayne to write a great
guitar rock masterpiece, which he hasn’t done since 1995 and doesn’t show any
signs of doing any time soon. I mean,
sure, the riff is pretty cool, and the groove is real nice (You know the feel of the song kinda reminds me of “Take
Meta Mars” from way back on In a Priest
Driven Ambulance? No shit! Good story, I know), but couldn’t
I do like
both “The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song” and “The W.A.N.D.,” though. A lot, even (though I suppose I could give a
shit about “Haven’t Got a Clue,” outside of its first 30 seconds). I just wish the production wasn’t so…I dunno,
complicated? Let these songs be, you
know? They’re good songs! I think I dig “Mr. Ambulance Driver” so much
(great song, there) because it’s so relatively simple and austere in its
low-key keyboard pop catchiness (and in the process completely contradicting my
earlier point about “Goin’ On”), and I declare the ridiculously titled “Pompeii
Am Götterdämerung” one of the album’s biggest winners because the whole song is
so spacey and weird that these crazy, borderling-annoying production values fit
it to a tee. And you know what my favorite song is? “Free Radicals.” Yes, the one where “
Not sure
what else to say here. It’s becoming
increasingly clear that the Lips aren’t gonna match their mid-nineties guitar
rock peak again, if only because Wayne is rapidly approaching 50 and there’s
only so long the Lips can stay relevant without Michael Ivins’ afro. Although I was frightened for a little bit
there, I can safely say the Lips have definitely not lost it yet, but I fear the day when one of
their albums officially sucks (instead of just sounding like it sucks at first
when it’s in fact pretty good) isn’t too far off in the future. But