The Flaming Lips are by far the trippiest band I've ever gotten into. Not the most psychedelic, mind you - the trippiest. And there trippiness has been super fun to watch evolve.
Take, for example, "Talkin' Bout the Smiling Deathporn Immortality Blues (Everyone Wants to Live Forever)."
Moving ahead to the Transmission era, you can see they've gotten more confident in their showmanship and have married their feedback-driven trippiness to really good, bubblegummy pop songs, like "Turn It On":
In the late 90s, the Lips dedicated themselves to putting on the trippiest spectacle in all of rock 'n roll (they succeeded), and their albums since this time have tended to have been informed by this spectacle, rather than vice versa. Pre-Soft Bulletin cuts don't often find their way into the current show, but when they do... check out the Ambulance era "Mountainside" performed last year:
4 comments:
thanks for this. the flaming lips (well, hear it is through clouds taste metallic, anyway) exemplify what i think you meant when you asked a couple of saturdays ago about bands that have changed your life. i probably need to think a little more about what this says about me, but their relevance in my life during those years is undeniable.
"Take, for example, "Talkin' Bout the Smiling Deathporn Immortality Blues (Everyone Wants to Live Forever)." While the seeds of the epic guitar freakout that was to be In a Priest Driven Ambulance are clearly there, this song only hints at the musical weirdness that lay just down the road. "
wait, am i reading this wrong?--didn't Hit to Death in the Future Head come out after In a Priest Driven Ambulance?
Oh my gawd. You're right. Why do I always think that song is from Telepathic Surgery? One strikethrough, coming up!
THE FLAMING LIPS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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