Birth, death, baby, corpse, goatee, no goatee: life presents itself to us in the form of binary oppositions that are, most of the time, packaged up neatly into little idealistic parcels without us having to worry much about it. Well, all that stuff goes out the window in the NSFW clip for The Flaming Lips’ Bon Iver collaboration, “Ashes in the Air.” It addresses many of the big, scary questions explored in The Terror, the band’s upcoming, 13th full-length, but as far as I can tell, there are no sparknotes for a visual text that features Residents-styled astronauts, goateed babies, cavemen covered in flour, paint-slicked cadavers, and human meat grinders. Guess it’s a matter of trippy interpretation, then. If your head isn’t spinning by the second half, just wait for the seizure-inducing animations and the gruesome finale. Psychic pain is the Lips’ biggest pleasure, and it’s ours as well. I just hope my mind will stitch itself back together, in time to get ripped apart again by The Terror when it strikes later this month. Thanks for the nightmares, Mr. Coyne.
• The Flaming Lips: http://www.flaminglips.com
• Warner Bros: http://www.warnerbrosrecords.com
More about: The Flaming Lips
