I have not seen it in full,
but judging only from short clips
I have seen, the first film written by,
starred in, with a soundtrack composed by
The Flaming Lips, a thing called Christmas
On Mars, was an utterly terrible film.
Some folks will disagree, claim that it is
a classic cult film on par with Eraserhead.
The soundtrack to it, quiet, synthy and
symphonic, Once Beyond Hopelessness, is pleasant
enough to listen to, sounds like a soundtrack
to something, is sleepy, but interesting.
It’s all instrumental. It’s kind of fun to hear
it and try to imagine the visual that would
accompany the music–better, I think, than
actually watching the film–if you can find it.
It’s not streaming anywhere, dvd copies are
scarce, so you have to be okay with trailers
on YouTube. It’s guaranteed, if nothing else,
like most things regarding The Flaming Lips,
to be weird.
Embryonic was the first album by The Flaming
Lips that I didn’t like. Monotonous and noisy,
all the alt-rock hook sensibility drained absolutely
dry. Most of the tunes here are structured around one
repetitive riff, and while there may be some melody
over the top of these riffs, and every once in a while
a breakdown of some kind, there is scant evidence
of verses and choruses, no bridges, few of those
beautiful symphonic interludes. Wayne’s singing, always
some degree of awful, but much improved through
the last few records, seems deliberately terrible here.
On the first good song, the sleepy and sad “Evil,”
Wayne doesn’t even try to hit the notes.
According to Wikipedia’s discography
of the band, this record was their most
successful album in the United States. This does
not compute. Listening to it now, I still find it difficult
to love or to even like very much. I have to work
pretty hard to appreciate its merits. What are
its merits? One might ask. It certainly creates
a vibe, a terrifying one, I think. Even while the
tunes oscillate between trashy noise rock and
quiet intensity, there is a unifying tone over
the course of its hour and ten minutes, a kind
of lo-fi nightmare fever dream, that, I suppose, in a
very specific mood for that sort of thing, might
be cool. The only humor or light-heartedness
on the record comes on side three with the
silliness of “I Can Be A Frog.” A short reprieve
from the general oppressiveness of Embryonic.
Turn this record up too loud, and it will
make you crawl out of your skin. That might be
good. The best I can do with this record is to
listen at low volume and just sort of suffer through.
This record didn’t put me off The Flaming Lips
all together, though. Four years later I would buy
The Terror on CD, and my response to it was almost
equally negative. I almost lost hope. I held on.
It would be years before my faith
in The Lips would be restored.
Despite being traumatized by the Embryonic CD,
out of sheer loyalty and curiosity about the
companion pieces, only one other album
of which I already had (At War With The Mystics),
I bought this Heady Nuggs box set with a vinyl
version of my least favorite Flaming Lips record,
a box that included the soundtrack to
Christmas On Mars, and these two oddball
collaborative recordings, a track-by-track cover
album of The Dark Side of the Moon with another
band called Stardeath and the White Dwarfs, with
cameo performances by Henry Rollins and Peaches,
and a record in collaboration with a dozen different
artists, Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends.
I know The Dark Side of the Moon in the way
that most people who are not hard core
Pink Floyd fans know it, mostly through FM radio
over and over as a kid. Except for the vocal melodies
from the most famous tunes from this record,
musically and sonically, this version is in places
unrecognizable. Nevertheless, it’s way more
palatable than Embryonic,
despite some of that same trashy distortion,
the drums only slightly less shitty sounding;
it’s just simply way easier on the ears. And
the soundscape work, spoken word moments
from Rollins and vocal pyrotechnics from Peaches
in “The Great Gig in the Sky,” the electronic gizmo
robot rendering of “Money,” all provide a kind of
masterclass in classic rock music reinterpretation,
a challenge The Flaming Lips also took up with
Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band in 2014, which,
unfortunately or not, is missing from my collection.
This version of the classic Floyd album is definitely
worth a listen and I’m glad I have it, but purists
must be forewarned:
you will not be pleased.
Right out of the gate, my first thought on
The Heady Fwends album is how refreshing
it is to hear someone besides
Wayne Coyne on lead vocals. This record begins
with Ke$ha and will, over the course of its four
sides, include the likes of Bon Iver, Tame Impala,
Nick Cave, Yoko Ono, Eryka Badu, and other rock
luminaries. This is, like all albums by
The Flaming Lips, a wild ride, and while more
musically friendly than either Embryonic or
The Terror, still presents one auditory challenge
after another. There are great moments on
this record, but maybe just as many moments
that might be skippable. This box set nearly
concludes (The Terror doesn’t come out until
2014) the darkest years (at least for this fan)
of The Flaming Lips discography. So it’s time
to cleanse the palette with a live performance
from 2016 of The Soft Bulletin in its entirety with the
Colorado Symphony Orchestra!
Notes on the vinyl editions:
- Once Beyond Hopelessness: The Original Christmas On Mars Film Score, Warner Brothers Records, 2008, the third disc in the box set, Heady Nuggs, 2006-2012, 8 LPs, black vinyl.
- Embryonic, Warner Brothers Records, 2009, the fourth and fifth disc in the box set, Heady Nuggs, 2006-2012, 8 LPs, black vinyl.
- The Flaming Lips, Stardeath and the White Dwarfs, with Henry Rollins and Peaches Doing The Dark Side of the Moon, Warner Brothers Records, 2010, the sixth disc in the box set, Heady Nuggs, 2006-2012, 8 LPs, black vinyl.
- The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends, Warner Brothers Records, 2012, the seventh and eighth disc in the box set, Heady Nuggs, 2006-2012, 8 LPs, black vinyl.
- The Soft Bulletin, Recorded Live at Red Rocks Amphitheatre, Featuring the Colorado Symphony with Conductor André de Ridder, Warner Brothers Records, 2019, double black vinyl. Recorded live in 2016.
In case you don’t already know: I’m listening to almost everything in my vinyl collection, A to Z, and writing at least one, sometimes two or three long skinny poem-like-things in response for each artist, and on a few occasions, writing a long skinny poem-like-thing in response to more than one artist. As a poet and a student of poetry, I understand that these things look like poems, but they don’t really sound much like poetry, hence, I call them “poem-like-things.” I’ll admit that they’re just long, skinny essays that veer every now and then into the poetic or lyric.
michael jarmer 