![]() ‘The Soft Bulletin’ kicked off a run of unprecedented commercial success. It’s also where Wayne Coyne’s reedy, off-kilter vocals finally find a fit, as his lyrics of childlike wonder gave a layer of humanity and vulnerability to a record that’s packed to the gills with musical flourishes.Īn obvious choice for this list for sure, but it remains essential listening. The band mostly eschewed guitars in favour of cinematic orchestration, creating a record that’s equal parts bombastic and spellbinding. Within seconds, The Flaming Lips establish the blueprint that would define almost the next decade for the band with the distorted drum beat, upwards glissando and the floating riff that opens ‘Race for the Prize.’ Incredibly, it’s been over twenty years since The Flaming Lips’ masterpiece was released, yet time has not diminished its majesty.ĭespite the fact they grew as band throughout the 90s, ‘The Soft Bulletin’ still seemed to come from nowhere. ![]() Sure, it’s a novelty, but it’s arguably the closest the band have come to realising a fully immersive sound. To add to the feeling of dislocation even further, individual sounds were sometimes cut across CDs meaning, if your set-up was skewwhiff, it was theoretically possible to hear the echo of a sound from one speaker before hearing the original sound from another. The concept was that each listen would be a unique experience depending on the fidelity of your sound system, location of your speakers and accuracy of your synchronisation (ever tried to get four CD players to start at exactly the same time?). The only commercial release from this period was ‘Zaireeka,’ an album issued on four separate CDs, again all designed to be played at once. The group were becoming more interested in sound experimentation, organising ‘The Parking Lot Experiments,’ whereby forty cassette tapes would be played simultaneously in parked cars. The band signed to a major (Warner Bros.) in the early 90s and even achieved a cult US hit with ‘She Don’t Use Jelly,’ but were still little more than a curio in the music scene. ‘Telepathic Surgery’ still had the kind of in-joke feel that makes 1980s Flaming Lips hard to truly love – ‘U.F.O Story’ is one part spoken word conspiracy tale and one part reverb-drenched guitar-wrangling before, bizarrely, a delicate piano coda which invents Sigur Rós – but for a glimpse of what The Flaming Lips used to be about, ‘Telepathic Surgery’ is the record to investigate. The first hint that the band might transcend the DIY scene came with ‘Chrome Plated Suicide’, a track which, although heavily indebted to ‘Sweet Child o’ Mine,’ showed a melodic gift that had been previously been obscured behind layers of feedback and noise. way, with a liberal helping of acid-fried freak rock. Their first few records were scratchy in a Dinosaur Jr. ![]() These aren’t necessarily the best five albums in their repertoire, but if you want the story of how a bunch of misfits formed in the salad days of post-punk became a troupe of interstellar adventurers, here are the key touchstones on the journey.Įven the most ardent of Flaming Lips album would admit their early output was patchy, and it often seemed they were making insular music with no thought to pleasing anyone but themselves and their drug buddies. So what better time to take a look at the back catalogue of one of alternative music’s most interesting and storied bands? ![]()
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