flaming lips classic or dud?

I was hooked forever by the opening to the show on the Clouds Taste Metallic tour. The band took the stage in the dark to the opening chords of "The Abandoned Hospital Ship" and Coyne sang the first couple of verses with a spotlight on him. Then as the guitar hit the first distorted chord, 1,000,000 Christmas lights -- which were draped over everything on stage, mic stands, drums, wrapped around spinning pinwheels, all over the floor, etc. -- all lit up at once. I didn't know they were there at all and everyone went completely berserk. Massive shivers running down my spine.

Then I first heard Zaireeka at a listening party in a bar. They had four good stereos and eight speakers positioned around the dance floor, where everyone sat together. The music was amazing, but hearing the swelling strings and barking dogs at such volume was enough to induce tears. What a great thing, to play around with the idea of when and how music can be heard. The idea of turning deep listening into something that has to be a social (in order to sync the CDs)! And I love the idea that listening to the record is something that will only happen every once in a great while, turning into a real event. How anyone could complain about such a beautiful thing, I don't understand. Zaireeka is definitely a major achievement.

Also saw and loved the boombox symphony, more productive clowning. Throw in several great pop records and you have a classic band. I could give a shit if the critics let them off easy. One of the best bands going in my book.

One thing I found interesting was that I once remember Wayne Coyne pronouncing that when he had played the CDs together he found that the tracks would move in and out of sync with each other. I worked out why: They had purposefully made the tracks on each CD slightly different lengths!

Oh, classic BTW.

But I kinda disagree about the binary thing. Although I got into them kinda late (I was always a Rev fan, and avoided them for some reason) I love both the early acid-fried frenetic feedback explosion stuff and the demented orchestral Disney on acid later stuff.

I can recall reading an interview where they said that the arrangements were all the same, except instead of putting every melodic and harmonic line on a different crazee distorted guitar, they started putting all the arrangements onto other instruments instead. The disjointed, off-kiltre feeling remains, yet translated skillfully into another language.

I actually liked Clouds Taste Metallic, and I think it was actually one of their best albums overall. No freaky hit singles this time around, but some really killer skewed pop like "This Here Giraffe".

As a side note, I also reconstructed Zaireeka using digital editing software, but I tried it out in the way Coyne intended by taking my copy over to a stereo store in the same mall where I worked. (Thankfully, this made the whole process a bit easier, too, because you could use a single remote control to start all of the players at the same time, for perfect sync'ing.) Coyne's assertion that CD players drift in and out of time is only kind of accurate. If you have four identical players, a lot of the time they'll keep identical time, but if you have different manufacturers' players, they'll vary wildly, but often they vary in one way: slow, or fast. Most don't tend to go in and out of sync unless they're junk. In which case, it brings up questions about the accuracy of reproduction with certain CD players, and just how much they have to be off before we notice it. With record players you notice it right away because the pitch changes, but with CDs it's strictly temporal elongation or compression. I found thinking about that more interesting than the "new work every time" tag being attached to Zaireeka.

Don't agree with the binary theory though. Admittedly I don't own everything the mighty Lips have put out (mainly due to the earlier albums being hard to find), but I have Hit to Death, Transmissions, Clouds Taste Metallic, Zaireeka and The Soft Bulletin, and listen to all with alarming regularity. Although I first got into them through Clouds Taste Metallic, it's probably my least favourite now (although I love it to bits), and my favourite is now the supposed *dullness* of The Soft Bulletin. Although how an album of so many textures and thoughts can be seen as dull I fail to understand, but maybe that's just me.

I only really saw Flaming Lips by accident- a friend had blagged too many shows for one night, and gave me his ticket for the Lips at the Electric Ballroom in Camden. It's not often you see a life-changing show, but that was one of them.

Since then, the schtick has kind of grown to annoy me, in that it seldom seems to change (backing tapes with accompanied visuals in quadrophonic sound, hand puppets, toys, confetti, etc. etc.) but to walk into it for the first time with no idea of what to expect, and be confronted with that... it was, frankly, mind-blowing.

I think that might be why I don't make much of a distinction between early acid-fried guitar feedback and later Disney on acid material- because I was able to experience it as a whole back catalogue body of work, rather than be disappointed by the way that it mutated and changed.

These sonic hedonists have had their ups and downs, but the good times outway the bad, and few other bands manage to sound so joyous. At least four incredible albums, countless life-changing live shows, and even if you don't like them you have to admit that their boombox experiments (and Zaireeka) are really cool ideas that few other bands would have the balls or creativity to enact. Despite the occasional self-recycling, I would say, classic.

The band has come a long way since Hear it Is, and I imagine they may still have a couple more innovations left in them.

A radiohead fan (melissa W for instance) could never undestand this stuff. Wayne Coyne's lyrics on the Soft Bulletin are also very beautiful, and I don't even care abt lyrics most of the time!

Whereas Thom Yorke's voice is 'soulful'. Its garbage melissa! Wayne Coyne isn't a great singer but he's not terrible, and in face it fits perfectly with what's he's singing abt in the sof Bulletin.

''And Wayne Coyne is Satan incarnate.''

Whereas yorke is an angel...but look in Yorke's eyes. He's crying all the way to the bank.

Anyway, King crimson are the most EVIL band ever! look at that cover of 'Red'.

''I think their songs rely on really annoying nostalgia-trigger conventions in "psychedelic" surroundings that aren't really all that psychedelic.''

The arrangements on the Soft bulletin are masterful! Fuck the beatles, Radiohead, Beach Boys...this is how you use a studio! and aren't radiohead nostalgic? For fuck's sake, they are basically king crimson without Fripp's brilliant guitar playing! Open your eyes, W!

Chaki- Only heard Soft bulletin. The lyrics are lovely there!

"i accidently touched my head.. and noticed that it had been bleeding.."

The above is a wonderful lyric. Better than anything Yorke can write, anyway. Besides, you can always take out a lyric at random from any song and then say 'It's dumb' but you've got to look at the whole song. I can't remeber it and I haven't bought the album with me to Canada so i can't argue this out until i get back.

(Compare -- and this is not necessarily an overall-quality "this is better" thing, but -- compare with the Delgados' Great Eastern where the approach took really well-constructed standalone songs and then broke apart and rearranged them in Fridmann style.)

"I want the organ tone to be like this."
"Okay but what should the organ actually be playing?"
"Whatever, it's not important so long as the tone's like this."

versus

"Here's what the organ should be playing."
"What should the tone be like?"
"I dunno, what does Fridmann think?"

Heard a couple of tracks from great Eastern and I couldn't believe what utter fucking shit I was listening too. The string arrangements were just so corny. That was a desperate attempt by the delgadoes to get away from the 'Pixies with strings' of their previous album to basically copying the Flaming lips.

fridman is a button pusher man! It's Wayne Coyne who is the genius behind it all. And he is a good songwriter but i haven't heard the new album.

(Also I guess I'm alone on Great Eastern, which actively surprises me: those sort of languid heel-to-heel melodic constructions always struck me as quite excellently done, not to mention remarkably consistent across the record. I think everyone I've told "Oh, you'd really enjoy this" has agreed for so long that I started to think the quality of their songwriting was self-evident.) (Don't really have an opinion on their mostly-just-functional lyrics but I can certainly see being less than excited about them.)

fridman is a button pusher man! It's Wayne Coyne who is the genius behind it all. And he is a good songwriter but i haven't heard the new album.

I didn't say Thom Yorke's was soulful. Actually, I didn't even mention Radiohead, did I? Why bring them up? This is about why I hate The Flaming Lips.

ahem.

(Umm Gareth Yoshimi comes off a lot like an (a) less songy and (b) more minimal but (c) more textural step from Soft Bulletin.)

(Umm Mel I've decided that I actually sort of agree with you w/r/t the "sense of wonder" thing (this is basically Coyne's vocals, though) sometimes seeming not actually-wondrous but a bit of a ploy, like the wispy wondrous voice-over at the opening of a children's fantasy movie...) (I'm evidently not as turned off as you are by this but when I am turned off by the Lips this is indeed a big part of it) (I.e. the songs and arrangements simply aren't magical or swoony enough to support that sort of approach to emoting over them.)

''I'm surprised that no one has any firm opinions here (ahem).''

Have you read the whole thing sean: ppl here have their opinions, that's for sure!

Flaming Lips have never excited me (I find lead singer guy very grating, much more so than Thom Yorke who I find grating, but largely ignorable) but then I probably can't "ever undestand (sic) this stuff."

I have said that the arrangements on that alb are fucking great and that wayne coyne's singing is entirely appropriate and that the tunes are beautiful and that i love the lyrics. You don't need a critic to tell you that.

Alex- you are just pissed off because I demolished your beloved Stooges on another thread.

Gareth- yeah he was being sarcastic. It was a long days yeaterday and i was too tired to notice (yes, I am making poor excuses...).

I am so transparent haha.

Better.. compared to what?

Celion Dion? Sigur Ros? Ted Nugent?

We're not talking about the Delgados here, i realise, but i am. WILL SEE, though, yes?

b-but if you talk such thrash then you're asking for abuse. But you are allowed to get away with it 'cause I'm tired. Lucky you!

there are a couple tunes on Yoshimi... that are complete chord structure rip-offs of Streethawk. And the meta-rock thing...

admit it! it all makes sense now!

David Fridmann -- the harbinger of doom for the band.

The Flaming Lips are the second greatest current American band (#1: Cotton Mather)

...and how they possibly could have gotten that impression of me.

"actively [hating] the people who disagree with her", "beyond aggressive"?!?

...So I'm Gonna Say Classic

Every album (except a bit of 'Telepathic Surgery') seemed classic and that they could do no wrong. I got 'Zaireeka' right when it came out, bought it at Border's books for 20 dollars and loved it. Then I ordered 'The Soft Bulletin' European cos it came out before and when i got the import, i was somewhat let down. I grew to love it, but it felt like the old band was dead and what they were doing now was always going to be just shy of their old acheivements.

'Yoshimi' I downloaded and was extremely let down about. I don't really know why, it just felt like a lot of the songs really didn't do it for me. It was the first Lips album i never bought. Then they started getting on MTV2 and car commercials and Intel magazine ads and the like. I was tempted to say 'they've sold out' but i don't think that's true and i'm not sure it will be possible for a band like this. But they have lost their vitality.