The Flaming Lips have always been a band that eschews conventionality and categorization. From the group’s quirky, acid-punk indie releases in the 80s to its transition from guitar-heavy alternafunk to sonically ambitious trippy studio syphonika in the 90s and 2000s, the vibe has remained as consistently unpredictable as it has stayed awesome. That the Lips are still, after three decades, putting out a steady stream of innovative work and touring relentlessly is not as noteworthy as the fact that they’ve put out more music in the last 12 months than anybody. That’s right, in terms of sheer hours of music (probably more than 35) they are the most prolific. This kind of output is ridiculous, but the way its been released is innovative on an insane level, even for a band that features duct-taped spaceships, human balloons, 20-foot-tall digital vaginas-slash-doors and three-feet-long synthetic hands as part of its standard stage act.
A vague January2011 promise of one song per month exploded into a constantly churning neo-psychedelic machine, as, starting in March, the Lips released, in monthly succession: the EP “Flaming Lips 2011: The Flaming Lips with Neon Indian”; the "Gummy Song Skull" EP, a seven pound skull made of gummy bear material with a gummy brain-slash-flashdrive; the EP "The Flaming Lips with Prefuse 73”; a live-in-studio recording of the band's 1999 album "The Soft Bulletin" on a flashdrive embedded in a marijuana-flavored brain inside a strawberry flavored gummy skull (as well as a best-of compilation entitled "Everyone You Know Someday Will Die" put together by drummer Kliph Scurlock); the "Gummy Song Fetus" EP, which consists of three songs on a flashdrive embedded in a bubblegum-flavored fetus made of gummy bear material; "The Flaming Lips with Lightning Bolt", a collaborative EP with experimental rock group Lightning Bolt; a six hour-long song entitled "6 Hour Song (Found a Star on the Ground” packaged with two other songs and released with a set of spinning discs with animations on them; a 24-hour song entitled "7 Skies H3" made available for purchase as a hard drive encased in an actual human skull; and a 12" EP collaboration with Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band.
Yes, they recorded a 24-hour song. And novelty is great. Novelty is as American as Oklahoma. Gummy skulls and spinning discs are super rad. They are. But for those of us who would rather surf YouTube for free shit than purchase a $5,000 skull-slash-USB cable, we’re going to be more concerned with how the actual music sounds than how it’s packaged. And how does it sound? Is it even possible to succinctly and coherently analyze, in a single review, hour s of music made with several (vastly aesthetically different) collaborators over dozens of recording sessions in a variety of lengths and formats (live vs studio)? Yes it is, in four words: Mindfuckingly brutish yet sextacular.
Actually it’s impossible, mostly because I’m lazy. But also because I don’t have time to imbibe all the shrooms necessary to listen to a 24, or even a 6-hour song in its entirety. I will say, though, for the casual listener who thinks “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots” is cute or who finds “She Don’t Use Jelly” catchy, this is a post-Embryonic Flaming Lips that is darker, much more experimental, mostly devoid of intelligible lyrics, and only completely accessible to those with a proclivity for consuming multiple narcotics within a short time frame, or simultaneously. This is music for those who would rather tackle Pynchon than James Patterson. A slightly less snobby way of saying that this is conceptual art. And seriously, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that Lips’ music has sort of mimicked the trajectory of the world at large for the last dozen or so years. From the pre-dot-com triumphant fanfare of The Soft Bulletin, to At War With the Mystics’ cable-friendly garbage spewed at a time (2006) of cheaply made foreign goods and a deceptively surging economy, to Embryonic’s crunchingly dark experimental dirge in 2009, to the seizure-inducing, haunting, eardrum-molesting maelstrom that is 2011. As if to say, “Shit is getting crazy, kids, we know, we’ll be there to hold your hand and guide you through the sins of your past and the mango-colored bliss that your future can be, if you’ll only trust us.” Abstract art was born from social and political turmoil. We need a break from straight-lines and convention, the Drudge Report blinking on the Subway-ride Kindle. An escape to the rapidly deteriorating fuzzy zones in our headspace. We must defeat the robots (hint: they hate gummy skulls).
Below are links to some of the 2011 tunes that may not require hallucinogens to be enjoyed by the average young professional, and a couple for which you might want to light up:
A constant stream of the 24-hour song is
here.
