THE FLAMING LIPS - “With Heady Fwends”
You
have to wonder. What exactly is going on in Flaming Lips world? 2011
saw a myraid of hard-to-get, hard-to-afford, and often hard-to-enjoy,
fetished releases. A 24 hour song wrapped inside a $3,000 jellied
lifesize skull. A Live album inside a $200 jellied skull. A 6 hour
“EP” inside a stroboscopic device. The $150 Gummy Song Brain. The
$30 USB Jelly Foetus. And, not forgetting, coloured vinyl
collaboration 12” EP's with Yoko Ono, Prefuse 73, Lightning Bolt,
Neon Indian, and so on. And here is the latest one : a double,
coloured splatter vinyl LP with no artwork, 9,500 released in US
retail shops only on Record Store Day, and in a limited edition of
500 on their website (the latter of which sold out in less than an
hour).
Has
being a Flaming Lips fan ever been quite so difficult?
Then
again, back in 1995, their CD singles came in fake honeycomb sleeves.
The 2008 film “Christmas On Mars” came with a box of popcorn
-which is still, no doubt inedibly, sealed in my record museum at the
back of the house.
You
might then be forgiven for thinking that,l since these records are so
absurdly limited and expensive, that they may be justified with the
excuse of “Any old crap” will do. Their studio output in 2011
totalled 33 hours and 9 separate fetish objects, as well as an insane
amount of highly sugared sweets, that delivered music on every format
apart from cassette.
You
might also be forgiven that, given their dalliance with mainstream
pop success was shattered irrevocably to pieces by 2009's weird,
largely improvised, free-form jazz fest “Embryonic” - and 2010's
bonkers recreation of “Dark Side Of The Moon” - that the Flaming
Lips simply don't care about being accessable. It's a fallacy to
think they ever did. It took them 20 years to have more than one hit.
It just so happened that their world collided with the pop mainstream
and high street stores for a fraction of a decade before they sheared
off into their own universe. Again, as ever, following their own
muse, which I suppose you must admire, or at least, respect.
This
then, a limited vinyl artifact, never repressed, is a
blink-and-you-will-miss-it release. The quality of what is in here is
betrayed by the absurd, and limited, legitimate ways in which this
album can be experienced.
Largely
made of colloborations with guest musicians, vocalists, and friends –
including Nick Cave and that boring geezer from Coldplay - “The
Flaming Lips! With Heady Fwends” is the most accessable, pop, fun
thing they've done since 2006. Starting with Ke$ha's guest vocal over
a gonzoid full on freakout remix of The Stooges “1969”, entitled
“2012”, it owes a debt to weirdness – and The Weirdness – the
size of Greece. By the time they get to “Children of The Moon”,
another, brilliant, silly, song feature Tame Impala, I'm sold.
Sure,
the release mechanisms for the recent Flaming Lips output is
appalling, elitest and borderline abusive of the fan that isn't both
lucky, and stinking rich, we still have MP3's, and best of all, we
have these great, stupid songs. As was once said of Sonic Yoof,
“Clever People Playing Stupid Music” is the modus operandi here,
and this record is made of 17 pieces, no slabs, of immense, fat
grooves, immaculately dirty fuzz geetar, and Wayne Coyne and friends
talking weird, transcendental nonsense. Imagine, if you will, that Pink
Floyd moved from something as masterful as “Wish You Were Here”
to the crazed bonkerness of “Atom Heart Mother”. Clearly its the
same band, but a flipside of the coin, yin to yang. And with little
concern for conquering charts or having hits, they are off, on their
own adventure, on the far side of the moon if you want to come. “I'm
Working At NASA On Acid” does, by title alone, give the game away.
It
isn't an easy record, or a quick one, but a dense, rewarding set of
noise that bears repeated listening and will open your ears. I get
it. This is artistic liberation and art fetishism. And it's never
sounded so good.
