Back astral projecting after a series of misfires, Flaming Lips reclaim their corner of the out-there
These acid rock throwback freaks have been ploughing their oh-so-zany furrow for 34 years now, making a virtue, as The Chemical Brothers might say, of digging their own hole. That’s when they’re not disappearing up it.
Over their last few transmissions from the bunker, Flaming Lips’ Zappaesque sorties into rock’s outer limits have gained increasingly limited returns as new depths of willful kookiness were explored. On their fourteenth album, Wayne Coyne and his merry pranksters once again attempt to warp sonic wavelengths to varying degrees of success.
Thankfully, Oczy Mlody actually boasts the kind of cohesion, direction and actual melody that Flaming Lips have sorely lacked for yonks. The tiresomely twee free form gonzo excess is largely gone to be replaced by astral and spacey mood pieces - There Should be Unicorns (yup) recalls Pink Floyd undertaking another interstellar overdrive and the analogue frippery and oscillating keyboards seem to take their cue from the profoundly weird soundtrack to John Carpenter’s debut feature film Dark Star.
Touches of Radiohead’s Amnesiac can be heard on the title track and Galaxy Sink sounds like a 1950s Biblical epic crossed with a western populated by pagan sun worshippers. These weird reveries work best as extended, exploratory jams full of weird interjections and sonic non sequiturs.
How, with its Charles Manson-like line “when we were young, we’d kill everyone”, is pure apocalyptic, post-hippy nihilism and the stoned grooves and gnomic lyrics (“I saw the universe in your giant eyes.”) are engrossing and nicely weird. One Night While Hunting For Faeries and Witches and Wizards To Kill even features the best use of frogs on the song since The Perfect Kiss by New Order (sorry, Paul McCartney).
Real horrorshow
Apparently this is a concept album about rich kids getting high on chemicals. Whatever; anyone longing for the otherworldly shock of career high The Soft Bulletin may become converted to Flaming Lips’ wayward cause all over again. Spacey, man, and recommended for late nights blossoming into blissed-out dawns.
Alan Corr @corralan
