Flaming Lips C or D

Yeah, like Radiator and Rings Around the World. *flees rapidly*

I think one of the key differences fans will notice is how focused this one is, compared to the wandering eclecticism of the previous effort. They were definitely zeroing in on a vibe here, and they got it. While some tracks will remind listeners of 'The Soft Bulletin' (particularly the mortality probing first single "Do You Realise",) large expanses of this record sound more in line with Grandaddy's space rock tendencies than it does 'Pet Sounds'.

I'm in love with this record, just like I was the previous effort. I'm really pleased that the Lips didn't deliver 'The Soft Bulletin II' here, and went off somewhere else (successfully).

Oops.

http://pitchfork.com/news/43910-flaming-lips-to-record-six-hour-song/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+PitchforkLatestNews+%28Pitchfork%3A+Latest+News%29

Goddammnit they are awesome!

Damnit i hate these guys now. So well, 15+ years of fandom. Everyone who ever gave them shit for turning into a gimmick band is 100% right. Time to sell all my old CD singles on amazon... =(

I take back everything i said on that Erykah Badu thread, fuck these fame whores.

why?

http://pitchfork.com/news/54360-the-flaming-lips-and-miley-cyrus-are-working-on-music-together/

eh?

That news is incredibly devastating to me.

they've always done stuff like that, e.g., covering kylie minogue's can't get you out of my head years ago. i dunno. i imagine their collaboration with miley cyrus is 50% genuine interest, 50% ironic self-amusement.

THAT IS UNLESS YOU RECOGNIZE THAT MILEY CYRUS AND PARIS HILTON ARE THE NOS. 1 -- 2 BEST MUSIC ACTS IN THE LAND.

then it's like 65%/35%.

The difference is Kylie Minogue & Madonna are actual artists.

you have dishonored hanna montana!

and the supposed author of "Jesus Shootin' Heroin"!

so collaborating with edward sharpe and the magnetic zeros and chris martin gets a pass but miley cyrus is where the line in the sand gets drawn?

those are all people in the music industry, that much is correct

They take on the world, you know?

Ke$ha too, remember

Was their recent record any good? I loved Embryonic, but I heard almost zero about the followup.

@ Adam please include "reason for selling" in your Amazon listings, OK? thx

Was their recent record any good? I loved Embryonic, but I heard almost zero about the followup.

― lauded at conferences of deluded psychopaths (Sparkle Motion)

Last album was excellent. It was so bleak and beautiful. Shame it was so underrated.

These fuckin' guys:

Flaming Lips are also working with Tame Impala and Miley Cyrus on a remake of the Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Will this come before or after the full-length Kesha collaboration? Also, that quote was taken from this article about the new companion piece to DSOTM.

they also put on an incredibly tedious live performance

Was their "Stone Roses" ever not madly limited/expensive/etc?

Why can't they manage one interesting cover album? Why the predictability/

Also, I hear they fired Kliph.

Every time I hear that Yeah Yeah Yeah song I think it's the Wiggles or something. I really liked The Terror though.

Only mentioning cause that happened today.

the DSOTM thing is a pretty clever gimmick IMO

Can't help but feel these guys are seriously testing people's patience, and I don't mean in a good way.

Yeah I'm a huge fan but I have no interest in any of this stuff. The Terror is a great album, if it had been the follow up to Embryonic without any of those other releases in between it would have probably got a lot more attention than it did.

the DSOTM thing is a pretty clever gimmick IMO

― coops all on coops tbh (crüt), Tuesday, April 1, 2014 4:08 AM (18 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

...and an April Fools Day prank.

Makes sense- the line about Wizard of Oz didn't add up

Man, no joke, my iTunes shuffled up that "Yeah Yeah Yeah" song minutes after opening this thread. Gosh, that's got to be one of the most annoying songs ever made. It's really incredible how under the radar the last couple of pretty heavy psych records went. It's shame the band's public face has become so silly and novelty and whimsical, because the music is going dark. A pretty sharp turn from their usual brand of Muppet Rock.

I can still enjoy Yeah Yeah Song but there are a few songs on that album I never need to hear again. Free Radicals, The Wizard Turns on and Haven't Got a Clue are all a waste of time. Haven't listened to that album all the way through in a long time now.

So, it's an April Fools Day joke, and the music actually exists.

Like the RHCP, if you can't tell the difference between a joke and the real thing, that spells trouble.

Some drama/gossip to liven things up:

http://www.brooklynvegan.com/archives/2014/04/the_flaming_lip_21.html

Kliph wasn't fired for calling Wayne out on his midlife crisis b.s. (although if anyone in that band had the nuts to bring it up to Wayne, it would be Kliph!) He was fired for taking a stand against Wayne's new buddy - the daughter of OK's tea-bagging, homophobe governor Mary Fallin - when she donned a Native headdress for a racist publicity stunt. When Kliph called her out on social media for being a shithead to the Oklahoma Native community who complained about her headdress publicity stunt, she tattled on him to Wayne. Wayne actually told Kliph he was fired for insulting Fallin publicly. On a kinda-related note, word from Wayne's inner circle is that he was so geeked about getting an invite to Governor Teabagger's mansion for a party with a bunch of 20-something Republican hipster wannabes (friends of the Gov's daughter) that he was practically begging his band mates to go with, an invite that everyone else in the band felt was pretty lame and to which everyone else declined. Not Wayne tho. He and Fallin are pretty tight...he recently posted an even more offensive picture of his dog wearing an authentic looking Native headdress in response to the Oklahoma Native community's backlash against Fallin for her headdress stunt. No one in the band dares speak out on this one bc they have families to support and Wayne has bogarted all the Flaming Lips earnings and keeps them all on a pretty short financial leash. He is like the innocent little boy in Citizen Kane that just eventually went bad...it just happens to some people. He is now a full fledged, desperate-for-attention, shameless, tasteless fool. Who is smack dab in the midst of a midlife crisis...his glittery makeup is something his 20-year old girlfriend makes him do!! Hahahahaha!!!!

Ugh. Fuck Coyne. This only confirms what I've felt since the way he handlded the Badu video. Shame I still like so much of his music.

http://www.thelostogle.com/2014/04/01/new-wayne-coynes-jumping-on-the-headdress-controversy-bandwagon/

Pretty plausible story when all's said and done. It's a shame he became such a huge shithead in his 50s. Maybe he's always been one?

I for one intend to take every claim made by an anonymous Brooklyn Vegan commenter as gospel.

I don't know who "kliph" is or why they got fired but it only took a 5-second Google to find out that all that stuff about coyne being an offensive cunt is true

try googling kliph and flaming lips smartypants

I don't care enough

Hah first Miley now Funny or Die, Wayne you really want me to burn all my old CDs don't you?

On a personal level, I've been done with Wayne since he was such an asshole about releasing that Badu video. Focusing on just the music part, I'm not as bothered by a Miley collab as I am them covering another fucking classic rock sacred cow. Let it go! It just frustrates me because the last two studio albums have been great and I want them to pursue more in that direction instead of all this dicking around covering albums.

http://www.brooklynvegan.com/archives/2014/04/drummer_kliph_s.html

There you go.

Ok I like the "Lucy in the Sky" and Miley does a good job singing that one note. But the Beatles album as a whole has some really bad performances on it.

It's more in line with those 70s dollar bin moog compilations than anything else.

Still a lot of fun tho.

Band becomes more and more of a dud.

Why the creepy ending?

Thought Miley was awesome on ADITL too.

Saw Wayne on the cover of this yoga magazine while I was in line at Whole Foods yesterday.

http://mantramag.com/wayne-coyne-flaming-lips/

Can totally picture him being the perv at the yoga class

aw with a little help from my "fwends"

http://media.giphy.com/media/Ge5OxoHdDZj4k/giphy.gif

terrible band

Lucky for crits that the dumb high-concept collabo records dovetail w/ Coyne's very visible descent into public asshattery

Vocals on "Getting Better" sound like they were done in one take while the singers were checking their phones. Actually most of the performances on this sound like first takes.

Ugh... just tried sitting through this and it's p much awful all the way through

Embryonic really surprised me and I enjoy the trippier stuff they've done of late more than anything since the early 90s, but i recently discovered that i don't like looking at Coyne in videos and live clips anymore. dude just sends off creep vibes to me now.

i saw them once and he talked for at least 1/3rd of the set and the part of the visuals that were of the band were like zoomed in on his face and like going up his nose throughout. that was the start to my not caring about the flaming lips

It's funny, it seems to me the band finally recovered from the unfortunate Soft Bulletin and Yoshimi period with some interesting records (Embryonic, Heady Fwends and to a lesser extent The Terror) only to once again begin to flounder and disappear up Wayne's ass. I don't get how Drozd just keeps going along with whatever. He seems so much smarter than that and could prob. come up with something a bit more interesting on his own. Much like Nick Cave is/was indebted to Mick Harvey, Coyne owes much to Drozd. Harvey always did the heavy lifting for Mick and the same could be said for Drozd.

Just look what happened to the Bad Seeds after Mick left. They seemed like a bad Las Vegas Bad Seeds cover band last time I saw them. I imagine the Lips would suffer considerably if Drozd decided to take a hike.

Drozd solo album would be amazing.

It's been twenty years since the Flaming Lips released Clouds Taste Metallic, their seventh LP as well as their last album to feature guitarist Ronald Jones. Today, the band announced a deluxe reissue of the record featuring rarities, B-sides, and other ephemera, out November 27 via Warner Bros. Heady Nuggs 20 Years After Clouds Taste Metallic will be available in a number of configurations, including a three-CD collection and a seven-LP boxset. Check out the tracklisting for the CD boxset below.

http://pitchfork.com/news/61371-the-flaming-lips-announce-clouds-taste-metallic-20th-anniversary-reissue-box-set/

Heady Nuggs 20 Years After Clouds Taste Metallic 1994-1997 CD Box Set:

Disc 1: Clouds Taste Metallic / The King Bug Laughs (Oddities and Rarities)

01 The Abandoned Hospital Ship
02 Psychiatric Explorations of the Fetus With Needles
03 Placebo Headwound
04 This Here Giraffe
05 Brainville
06 Guy Who Got a Headache and Accidentally Saves the World
07 When You Smile
08 Kim's Watermelon Gun
09 They Punctured My Yolk
10 Lightning Strikes the Postman
11 Christmas At the Zoo
12 Evil Will Prevail
13 Bad Days (aurally excited version)

Disc 2: Due To High Expectations The Flaming Lips Are Providing Needles For Your Balloons
01 Bad Days
02 Jets Part 2 (My Two Days As An Ambulance Driver)
03 Ice Drummer
04 Put the Waterbug in the Policeman's Ear
05 Chewin' the Apple of Yer Eye
06 Chosen One
07 Little Drummer Boy
08 Slow Nerve Action
09 It Was a Very Good Year
10 Sun Arise
11 Life on Mars
12 Ballrooms of Mars
13 Hot Day
14 Nobody Told Me
15 Magician Vs The Headache
16 She Don't Use Jelly (Live @KJ103)

Disc 3: Psychiatric Explorations of the Fetus with Needles (Live in Seattle 1996)
01 The Abandoned Hospital Ship
02 Unconsciously Screamin'
03 Take Meta Mars
04 Moth in the Incubator
05 Put the Waterbug in the Policeman's Ear
06 Lightning Strikes the Postman
07 Bad Days
08 She Don't Use Jelly
09 Chewin' the Apple of Yer Eye
10 When You Smile
11 Psychiatric Explorations of the Fetus With Needles
12 Love Yer Brain
13 Placebo Headwound

Gotta say it's kind of a lame set, all previously released except for that live show, which is indeed pretty awesome. Where are the Peel session cuts? Where are the unmastered mixes? No DVD copy of the cool "Making of Clouds" short film? Looks like there are a few Peel sessions but still missing stuff that was on the singles releases.

Hrrrrrrrm.

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/oct/14/miley-cyrus-to-play-naked-show-with-flaming-lips

I guess that is the appropriate amount of gimmickry to invoke given how dreadfully boring and dull the musical material is.

the ol nudity sells industry trick

high art

Oh fuck..!!! @mileycyrus is planning a show where her, the band ( us ) and the audience are all COMPLETELY naked with milk ( well white stuff that looks like milk) is being being spewed everywhere .. It’s a video ( in the works) for #mileycyrusandherdeadpetz song The Milky Milky Milk…

white stuff that looks like milk

If their goal is to literalize masturbatory self indulgence as art then mission accomplished, I guess.

http://www.stereogum.com/1906350/the-flaming-lips-announce-new-album-oczy-mlody/news/

"The Castle" is a cool name for a song. the song itself almost put me to sleep tho.

https://www.stereogum.com/1999149/the-flaming-lips-plan-to-press-vinyl-records-with-miley-cyrus-urine/news/

Telepathic Surgery has made a nice commute soundtrack this week. Drums sound really big on this one and the guitars are good and trashy sounding. I got to wonder how many speakers 'UFO Story' cooked over the years with people turning it up to hear what they were saying and then getting blasted by the noise when it kicks in.

telepathic surgery is so awesome! earl nash otm four years ago. and that drum sound sounds like a cardboard box getting thwacked but i love it. what happened to this band...??? so sad. but i love those early years. this is really bringing me back. so much fun.

Around the time of Yoshimi the Lips started operating as if Wayne's lyrics and singing should be the focal point of the band.

At some point after that Wayne supposedly got into a stoner phase and everything got mushy and sloggy.

The Fear was super good though, and there's a lot of good stuff after Yoshimi but it takes work to find it.

Want to know the story behind Ivins quitting, but I don't think anyone's talking.

“You’re fxxked if you do and you’re fxxked if you don’t. Five stop mother superior rain”

I think the rot set in around Zaireeka. after that they became more about gimmicks and wacky stage props, and I remember being mildly disappointed by the Soft Bulletin while everyone else seemed to be raving about it. then Yoshimi came out and it was rubbish. haven't really bothered with them since then, I have listened to a couple of albums, didn't like At War With The Mystics at all, thought Embryonic was ok but never went back to it. haven't heard anything since then.

my late wife used to call Wayne "Nu-Wayne" because she couldn't reconcile him being the same person as the guy in the band she used to love.

excluding the collabs i think embryonic -> the terror is the best era of this band

i did hear one latter-day album that seemed nice and noisy. can't remember what it was though. yeah soft bulletin didn't do anything for me. there was brianwilsonitis across the country around that time. mercury rev caught a bad case of it. never recovered.

oh my gawd... meant so much to me when that came out. holy shit. so cool.

I'm not sure if I'd go as far as "best" era, but yeah the Embryonic > The Terror was a huge leap forward after the "sillier" era, imo. Been a bit diminishing returns since then, though I thought American Head was decent enough to have me cautiously optimistic about where they go next.

They had been a band 15+ years before they really had a big hit. That is a long time. It’s kinda wild to think of them as an 80s band, but they were.

It’s just rare for any musical artist that far into a project to keep going let alone keep growing and keep the older fans satisfied. Things change.

things do indeed change. i learned how to get out of bed in the morning in that time.

They had been a band 15+ years before they really had a big hit. That is a long time. It’s kinda wild to think of them as an 80s band, but they were.

― The Artist formerly known as Earlnash, Friday, March 1, 2024 6:52 AM (thirty-three minutes ago)

Wait, they had a bigger hit than "She Don't Use Jelly"?

"Jelly" was their only charting song in the U.S. (#55)

7 Skies H3 was good but I haven't gone back to it much. Oczy Mlody was pretty sludgy.

Zaireeka was the first time I paid attention to them and I bought it for the novelty of the thing. It was at the right time: in college and hanging out with the art kids. Then Soft Bulletin and I fell for them really hard. The SB shows were kinda junky in a very endearing way. The occasional props were toys and puppets that you could find at a novelty shop; they were totally rinky-dink but it worked in the context of these heavy songs about mortality the human existence. Wayne seemed like just a sincere guy.

I can't fault them for getting big and traveling on their path. I took my daughter to a later show and she loved it and we had a lot of fun. Musically, I'm not sure what I 'd want from them at this point. They got too sugary with Yoshimi & Mystics and then they veered into the more experimental stuff, the collaboration eps, the epic long songs, gummy releases, etc., and that was so much so fast and scattered. There's probably a lot of good stuff hiding in those releases but I don't have the patience at this point. American Head is back-to-basics but not as good.

Priest Driven Ambulance through the Soft Bulletin is an amazing run. "Slow Nerve Action" rules. And Hit To Death In The Future Head. They've got tons of good stuff. The Ronald Jones years might be my favorite. The layered guitars with lyrics that often read as nonsense but fit together just right. They introduced me to Smog!

Wayne revealing himself to be a creep in the whole Erykah Badu contretemps soured me on these guys, although I’d only paid attention to the early warners albums.

Yeah, that was gross.