It\‘s a song that is universally loved by diehard and casual fans alike, confronting death and grief with shimmering optimism. The instrumental \“Approaching Pavonis Mons by Balloon (Utopia Planitia)\” would earn the band their first Grammy, while \“Do You Realize?\” remains their biggest hit. Their bombastic sound-crushing punk days seemingly behind them, Yoshimi is a calmer, lusher album with heavy use of electronica and pop melodies. The Flaming Lips followed up The Soft Bulletin with the massively successful sci-fi concept album Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. The Flaming Lips Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots 2002 Album closer \“Bad Days\” is an offbeat \‘90s staple, heard by many for the first time during Jim Carrey\‘s Riddler\‘s inception scene in Batman Forever. \“When You Smile\” is transcendently beautiful and foreshadows their future pop brilliance, while \“Kim\‘s Watermelon Gun\” is perhaps the final word on The Lips\’ hyperactive punk days, with a twangy and sublime lead guitar part faded nearly to silence weaving throughout.
But the sound is crisp and explosive, with Ronald Jones\’ tweaky and subtle guitar virtuosity giving the album a palette of sonic residue unheard anywhere else. In many ways, it doesn\‘t move the band forward: it rehashes animal themes, atheist platitudes, and absurd imagery like an art-rock assembly line. By this point, the Coyne-Drozd-Ivins-Jones quartet had mastered the art of psychedelic alt rock, and Clouds is a build-up of unspent creative momentum that would burst over the next couple albums. The Flaming Lips Clouds Taste Metallic 1995Ĭlouds Taste Metallic is the mid-career fan favorite that lives up to its hipster hype. Aside from completely reconstructing the band\‘s dynamics, The Soft Bulletin kicks off a trilogy of their most accessible and pristinely produced albums, including Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots and At War With the Mystics. \“The Gash\” is a raucous declaration of personal will, while \“Feeling Yourself Disintegrate\” is a transcendent moment in The Flaming Lips\’ career.
\“The Spark That Bled\” best captures the album\‘s layers of moody ponderings backed by lush orchestration. It takes The Lips\’ signature noise-rock palette of the \‘90s and channels it through vibey synths and delicate flourishes, and by the end of the album abandons all remnants of their punk roots altogether. Coyne cites his father\‘s death, Drozd\‘s drug addiction, and his own fears of insanity as inspiration for the record. The Soft Bulletin is a confrontation with madness while trying to maintain composure. After the heavy concept baffled their label, who threatened to drop the act altogether, The Lips surprised everyone with The Soft Bulletin, a simultaneously blissful and melancholy album that has been compared to both Pet Sounds and The Dark Side of the Moon.
#The flaming lips transmissions from the satellite heart series#
Omitted are 2012’s Heady Fwends duets album, their full-length cover of Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon with Stardeath and White Dwarfs, the soundtrack for Wayne Coyne’s film Christmas on Mars, and any EP releases or compilations.įollowing the departure of reclusive virtuoso Ronald Jones, The Flaming Lips launched into a series of experimental and interactive concerts that culminated in the confusing four-disc Zaireeka. These are the best full-length albums from The Flaming Lips, including their often-overlooked pre-Warner Bros. Maybe it’s a testament to their old-fashioned Midwestern work ethic, sheer luck, or the raw talent of multi-instrumentalist Steven Drozd, but Flaming Lips albums are known for explorations into vast caverns of human emotion, psychedelia, and sonic experiments. In the studio, however, The Flaming Lips created a whole new niche in pop music teetering on the edge of avant-garde brilliance. It is safe to say The Lips rely on gimmicks, lights, balloons, confetti, giant hands, and lasers to win over crowds, something they have managed successfully for nearly three decades. After all, it was one of the band’s crazy concerts -this one featuring a flaming cymbal fueled by lighter fluid that led to at least one incident of a band member’s hair catching fire -that landed their record deal with Warner Bros. Frontman Wayne Coyne’s talent isn’t so much his musicianship as his role as a master of weird ceremonies. This time Cody Ray Shafer ranks The Flaming Lips.įrom their inception in the mid ‘80s, The Flaming Lips have touted themselves as a band you have to see live to really understand. If you disagree with our ranking then please let us know in the comments section. The order is decided by the individual writer, rather than our editors. Welcome to Ranked, our recurring series in which one of our writers takes an artist’s catalogue and ranks all of their official studio albums from most essential to least essential.
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