The flaming lips soft bulletin full album

On the equally crestfallen вЂњFlowers of Neptune 6,вЂќ his old acid-eating pals are getting shipped off to war or thrown in jail on the moving orchestral centerpiece вЂњMother IвЂ™ve Taken LSD,вЂќ his youthful naivete turns to sorrow as he sings of an addict friend taken off to a psych ward and another on life support after a motorcycle crash. вЂњWhat went wrong?/Now all your friends are gone,вЂќ Coyne sings on the albumвЂ™s majestically melancholy opener, вЂњWill You Return/When You Come Down,вЂќ and as American Head plays out, that absence takes many forms. (And while itвЂ™s not an explicitly autobiographical work, tellingly, one of its doomed characters is also named Tommy.) Though not a narrative concept album per se, each song feels like a vignette from some tragic sequel to Dazed and Confused, where carefree teenage kicks have given way to the unforgiving realities of young adulthood. American Head feels like it was born from this moment of innocence lost. In the 2005 band documentary The Fearless Freaks, we see old home-movie footage of Coyne and his brothers enjoying a typical вЂ™70s all-American adolescence, playing pick-up football with the local longhairs, before a darker narrative emerges-specifically of the drug habit that would land his brother Tommy in and out of prison. Instead of tunes about killer robots and unicorns with purple eyes, we get songs about people working in slaughterhouses and slinging coke on the side to get by, fond teenage memories of taking quaaludes and frightening recollections of trying LSD, and dramatizations of actual traumatic incidents from CoyneвЂ™s early years. Likewise, Coyne approaches his favorite topics-love, drugs, and death-from a less existential, more personal vantage, grounding his narratives in more naturalistic settings. American Head retains some of the symphonic sweep of the Soft Bulletin era and the freaky futurism of their post- Embryonic state, but, at its core, we find the band rekindling their past romance with Neil YoungвЂ™s piano ballads, the BeatlesвЂ™ psychedelic guitar tones, and BowieвЂ™s stargazing anthems. From that anecdote, Coyne and multi-instrumentalist Steven Drozd envisioned American Head as a work of speculative fiction, reimagining the Lips as the sort of drugged-out local Oklahoman rock band that mightвЂ™ve hung out and jammed with a pre-fame Petty while he was passing through town.ДЄs it turns out, that mythical вЂ70s scenario is really just a roundabout way of getting the Lips back to where they were in the вЂ90s. After revisiting the Tom Petty documentary RunninвЂ™ Down A Dream following the rock legendвЂ™s 2017 death, Lips ringleader Wayne Coyne became fixated with the story of PettyвЂ™s pre-Heartbreakers band, Mudcrutch, with whom Petty spent time in Tulsa in the early-вЂ™70s en route to L.A. In sharp contrast to the LipsвЂ™ recent adventures in fairytale fantasias, American Head finds its inspiration in an arcane piece of Oklahoma musical lore. The bandвЂ™s first album of the 2020s likewise marks another significant change in course in this case, however, it feels less like the start of a new journey than a homecoming. Nine years later, their orchestral opus The Soft Bulletin ushered in the bandвЂ™s imperial phase, while 2009вЂ™s Embryonic portended an extended period of wild, anti-pop experimentation. In a Priest Driven Ambulance was also the first installment in what would become a Lips tradition: releasing pace-setting albums at each turn of the decade.

After spending the вЂ80s trying to figure out if they wanted to be a prog Replacements or a punk Floyd, the Lips outfitted Priest with an interstellar noise-pop sound that nonetheless retained a distinctly Oklahoman flavor, complete with fairground noises, field recordings of crickets, and strange songs about Jesus. Thirty years ago this month, the Flaming Lips released their first game-changing album: 1990вЂ™s In a Priest Driven Ambulance.

The flaming lips soft bulletin full album