The Flaming Lips
http://www.flaminglips.com

styles: experimental rock, psychedelic rock, noise pop, neo-psychedelia
others: Butthole Surfers, Mercury Rev, Spiritualized, Grandaddy, Secret Machines

At War With The Mystics
Warner Bros., 2006
rating: 3/5
reviewer: filmore mescalito holmes


This is a really frustrating release for me. Right up to this record, I had seen the Oklahoma acid menagerie improve, in some form or another, with each successive release. This culminated with 2002's Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots, which was their most handsome critical and commercial success – and, on a side note, changed the course of my life (if it wasn't for YBTPR, I wouldn't be writing music reviews today). I still hold it to be one of the most human records ever released, up there with John Lennon's Imagine. But the strongest feeling I get from At War With The Mystics is that it's a wank-riddled parody amalgam of The Flaming Lips back catalogue, focusing on the earlier stuff.

At War begins on a sadly comedic note with the annoying "Yeah Yeah Yeah Song" and the fucking Scissor Sisters-like "Free Radicals." Right off the bat, you know something stylistically drastic has taken place. While they maintain some of the bizarre studio effects of their latter-day output, the Lips have made an inexplicable conscious effort to return to their mid-'90s freak folk guitar fuzz and unignorable '80s tweak vocal overdubs roots. Simultaneously, off the back of live covers like Black Sabbath's "War Pigs," they've rediscovered their record collection and remembered their classic rock influences (Peter Frampton's talk box makes several appearances). Paired with a new vocal appreciation for those jive talkin' Gibb brothers, the effect is often something of a clammy dream set where Studio 54 nightmares end and pre-Clinton administration acid flashbacks begin. Basically, everything you liked about the last two LPs is dead as disco. Just forget that Flaming Lips.

The new Lips are worthy of credit for a few reasons, though. Lyrically, Wayne Coyne has never been quite so politically and culturally relevant. His stated goals here are to bring down King Bush The Second (natch), gluttonous consumerism, and the perpetuators of such horrific social practices, like Gwen Stefani, Destiny's Child, and Black Eyed Peas (if you read my reviews, these are also favourite targets of mine). With these lyrics and passions, "The Sound Of Failure" achieves a '70s FM radio sheen that makes me think if I had heard this album ten years ago, I would've loved it. If more of At War were like the falsetto-less Yes meets Jethro Tull instrumental jam "The Wizard Turns On," I'd probably wholeheartedly endorse this record now. As such, if you can ignore the two irksome opening tracks and the Chipmunk-voiced first half of "It Overtakes Me" (as cool as that song's incorporation of the phrase "wake and bake" is), this could be one of the better Flaming Lips albums... but that's one torturous hell of an "if." This is their eleventh album, though. Every great band gets a Magical Mystery Tour eventually. Like Wayne Campbell said, "Led Zeppelin didn't write tunes everyone liked. They left that to the Bee Gees."

1. The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song...(With All Your Power)
2. Free Radicals (A Hallucination Of The Christmas Skeleton Pleading With A Suicide Bomber)
3. The Sound Of Failure / It's Dark...Is It Always This Dark??
4. My Cosmic Autumn Rebellion (The Inner Life As Blazing Shield Of Defiance & Optimism As Celestial Spear Of Action)
5. Vein Of Stars
6. The Wizard Turns On...The Giant Silver Flashlight & Puts On His Werewolf Moccasins
7. It Overtakes Me / The Stars Are So Big...I Am So Small...Do I Stand A Chance?
8. Mr. Ambulance Driver
9. Haven't Got A Clue
10. The W.A.N.D. (The Will Always Negates Defeat)
11. Pompeii am Götterdämmerung
12. Goin' On

Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
Warner Bros, 2002
rating: 4.5/5
reviewer: clement coleman


The clearest illustration of the qualities of the new Flaming Lips LP, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, can be found on the album’s cover. Depicted in broad strokes is, well, a pink robot, and, ah, a girl in a little dress--Yoshimi to be sure. This is candy-coated Japanimation, but delivered in lush painterly tones. Hello Kitty via Willem DeKooning, and it reflects the contents of the record handsomely.

The Flaming Lips are an experimental noise- rock band who experimented themselves into a broader spotlight in 1999 with their full-blown pop opera entitled The Soft Bulletin. The Bulletin was a critical favorite, and it ended the year in many "best-of" charts. The challenge of course comes with the follow-up, and The Lips have arrived at a conceit to elevate them beyond the clutches of the ghosts of Bulletin. 

The Flaming Lips have established themselves as an exploratory trio unafraid to imagine themselves in new rolls. They should be famous by now firstly for subverting and re-inventing the rock show by touring with boom boxes and headphones instead of guitars and drums. Likewise, they’ve refigured the concept of "stereo surround- sound" with their LP Zaireeka (1997), which was a 4-disc set whose individual discs were intended to be played at the same time in the same room. With Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, the Flaming Lips have done something less than revolutionary: they have rendered an acutely pleasant long player.

On Yoshimi, the Lips are as concerned with music that’s been released since Bulletin, as with The Bulletin itself. Those Radiohead records, Spiritualized, etc., and all of Jim O’Rourke’s bands (is there a band that Jim O’Rourke isn’t a member of?). This is to our benefit, because the Lips are a thoughtful and attentive bunch who really listen when others are talking. As a result, the Lips have constructed a simpler, groovier album of concision and composure. That said, there are moments when Yoshimi seems redundant, and that is hard to forgive after Bulletin, which never faltered, from the first note to the last. The Lips used to be a band you’d listen to for the songs. After Zaireeka and The Bulletin, they’ve become an album band. I’m unsure how Yoshimi declares itself in this context.

As a follow up to Bulletin, however, Yoshimi is a generous disc. While The Bulletin felt dire and tragic, Yoshimi, for all its battle hymns and drama, is far lighter fare. Gone are the cavernous reverberations and bombastic choirs of Bulletin, gone is the pleading and bleeding from Wayne Coyne’s sufferable throat. Instead we have highly polished veneers, songs built hermetic and airless, and a singer turning in a calm, pocketed performance. This is a pastoral record, but a synthetic one as well.

Contained in this record are the trappings of a science fiction narrative, and while The Bulletin examined the dynamics of life and death on the ground, Yoshimi is a bubblegum illustration of conflict in outer space. The songs are thematic thumbnails at best, and any glimpse at a storyline is abandoned by the fifth track.  Yoshimi feels casual like a child’s home-spun play, and it goes down easy. There are in the lyrics to these songs some of the same portentous concerns that were common to Bulletin. But the smooth surfaces of these compositions, and the softly throbbing rhythms, make the content feel immaterial, or delightful.

More playfulness found upfront: Yoshimi P-we is the name of a musician who appears on this record. She’s one of the drummers for the Boredoms, Japan’s most widely exported psychedelic prog band, and she screams and shouts across the title track of the album. Are these layers of meaning, or meaninglessness? The Lips are having fun, and fun is good.

Like the earliest incarnations of sibling band Mercury Rev, the Flaming Lips continue a dialogue with cinema that sometimes seems to overwhelm the artists. Yoshimi feels like one of those multi-million dollar films that amount to nothing. Lots of space pistols, lots of filtered lenses, but no story, no character. Yoshimi is the soundtrack to the greatest lousy Saturday afternoon movie never made. Yoshimi is the lush brushstrokes that define the most childish themes, an opera into a comic book, or a comic book into an opera. Just look at the cover.

1. Fight Test
2. One More Robot/Sympathy 3000-21
3. Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots pt. 1
4. Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots pt. 2
5. In the Morning of the Magicians
6. Ego Tripping At the Gates of Hell
7. Are You A Hypnotist??
8. It's Summertime
9. Do You Realize??
10. All We Have Is Now
11. Approaching Pavonis Mons By Balloon (Utopia Planitia)

The Soft Bulletin
Warner Bros., 1999
rating: 5/5
reviewer: mr p


The Soft Bulletin is absolutely stunning. Zaireeka was a massive breakthrough for them, but Soft Bulletin is the true gem in their catalog. They have definitely perfected the sound that makes up the present day Flaming Lips. Every note is perfectly crafted;  from the slightly reverberated guitars to the distorted mechanical drumming, The Flaming Lips have fused together the raw sound of the past with the futuristic sounds of the present. Brilliant lyrics and beautiful soundscapes shape the album into a musical orgy. Wayne Coyne's distinct voice slices confidently through the mix with tales of spiders and mosquito bites. The song structures on Soft Bulletin are close to where they left off on Zaireeka (in fact, some of the songs are leftovers from the Zaireeka sessions). The songs are often unpredictable and full of crazy tangents.  Each song is epic and inspiring -- I listen in awe every time "The Spark That Bled" shoots through my ears. "Feeling Yourself Disintegrate," "Suddenly Everything Has Changed," and "A Spoonful Weighs a Ton" are equally amazing and will leave you with drool dripping from your chin. The only downfall is their choice to put two alternate versions of songs at the end of the album. But despite this minute imperfection, The Soft Bulletin provides an exquisite soundtrack to have blasting in the car at night.

1. Race for the Prize [Remix]
2. A Spoonful Weighs a Ton
3. The Spark That Bled
4. The Spiderbite Song
5. Buggin' [Remix]
6. What Is the Light?
7. The Observer 
8. Waitin' for a Superman 
9. Suddenly Everthing Has Changed
10. The Gash
11. Feeling Yourself Disintegrate
12. Sleeping on the Roof
13. Race for the Prize
14. Waitin' for a Superman [Remix]

Zaireeka
Warner Bros., 1997
rating: 5/5
reviewer: mr p


Zaireeka is the first multiple sound source record and the first that "can cause a person to become disoriented, confused or nauseated." It's a quadruple disc album that has the same songs on each disc, but the unique part is that each CD contains different parts of a song. In order to get the full listening experience, you must listen to all four CDs at the same time, which also means you need four CD players. Although, the amount of discs you choose to play is completely up to you; it's designed to provide at least some sort of listening experience, despite the amount of CDs.

Invented by frontman Wayne Coyne, the Flaming Lips have created one of the weirdest rock albums ever.

Sound impractical and troublesome? You got that right; since there are discrepancies between different CD players (cheaper ones go faster than expensive ones), it's near impossible to get the songs to sync perfectly. But once you manage to get all 4 CDs going (or at least 3), the effect is nothing short of mind blowing. This four disc musical mutant doesn't let the listener remain passive, it constantly begs for the listener to get engaged with the music.

Picture this... You're sitting in the middle of a room surrounded by four stereos and it's up to you to keep the music in sync. After several failed attempts, you manage to sync the four CDs together. Four minutes into the song, you notice a system playing faster than the others, so you quickly run to the system and press pause/play a couple times in order to get the system back in sync. You make it just in time to hear the chorus of the climactic "Riding to Work In the Year 2025 (You're Invisible Now)".

Yeah, it's a lot of work just to hear a song, but the feeling is indescribable when it is done correctly. Even to hear just 2 minutes of perfectly synced music is more rewarding than you might think. When was the last time you listened to a CD where your actions dictated the outcome?

As far as the actual music on the CD, the shift in style from Clouds Taste Metallic to Zaireeka is one giant leap. Pregnant with sweeping orchestral arrangements and other alien noises, Zaireeka is similar to Soft Bulletin, but even more experimental.

Yes, the concept of Zaireeka can be annoying, and at times frustrating, but the music is amazing and the infinite musical possibilities from these four CDs cause the album to never lose its new car smell. Think of this album as a presentation of music, or musical event, rather than just sounds coming from speakers. Rumor has it that Zaireeka will be released on DVD (because most DVD players are equipped with at least four speakers); this way the listener will be able to hear the album as it was meant to be heard for the first time. Until then, have fun failing to sync the CDs together. My recommendation: don't even try using a discman.

1. Okay I'll Admit That I Really Don't...
2. Riding to Work in the Year 2025 (Your Invisible Now)
3. Thirty-Five Thousand Feet of Despair 
4. A Machine in India
5. The Train Runs over the Camel But Is...
6. How Will We Know?
7. March of the Rotten Vegetables
8. The Big Ol' Bug Is the New Baby Now