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New Release: The Flaming Lips ‘The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends’
The Flaming Lips release their 14th studio album, The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends, this Tuesday, June 26th. A collaborative effort, the album features thirteen tracks in all, each one involving a different musical artist.
But despite this collaboration, the album still sounds like The Flaming Lips. While each artist has added their own aesthetic to the tracks they worked on, the album itself does not feel as fragmented as collaborative works often do. It certainly has a cohesive and unified sense of itself as a musical effort. Yet, even so, there are some jerky spots, tracks that jump out at you as dissonant with the rest of the LP.
The first track, “2012 [You Must Be Upgraded]” is the one that stands out to me as feeling the least like it belongs with the rest of the album. This may be because the first thing we hear is Ke$ha’s voice, doing what Ke$ha does.
But overall, the album hangs together with phenomenal grace. Like many of The Flaming Lips works, there is as much of a story here as there is music. This story seems to be about several computers contemplating what it means to be human. The singular “I’m Working At NASA On Acid” (featuring Lightning Bolt) sounds like the last song played over a spaghetti Western. It twangs like a lonely ballad of a doomed hero, before busting open into an anthem like chorus of distorted sounds, as if The Flaming Lips were trying to figure out what it would feel like for the Milky Way to exist behind your left eyeball.
The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends will certainly demands several listens to digest its many strange shifts and turns. An excellent example of what collaboration can accomplish.
Below you can have a little taste of the strange trip that is the Flaming Lips. For more information go to: flaminglips.com