#The flaming lips discography full#

For an artist who would later be known as “that guy that follows every ridiculous artistic whim,” this was his first truly outrageous experiment. The Parking Lot Experiments, which are documented on* Fearless Freaks*, where the band plays the album in different cars to demonstrate the proper way to listen to the record, is fascinating to watch.

#The flaming lips discography full#

He spread out Zaireeka onto four separate discs that needed to be synced together to get the full picture. The album was inspired by a memory from Coyne’s childhood of being at parking lots and hearing the unintentionally creative results of different people’s clashing stereos. Ronald Jones’ departure following the release didn’t help matters.Īfter failing to make much of a splash with Clouds Taste Metallic, it might have seemed odd that the Flaming Lips released an album that required four separate stereos, and four people to properly sync, just in order to listen to it. The recording is equally odd, with a distorted soundscape running across the entire album, a nice “headphones” album. It’s a dense pop masterpiece, looser and grittier than later Lips, but with the precision and experimentation of the post-guitar-driven years. His love for the Beach Boys is all over Clouds Taste Metallic.

If he was a fan prior to the album, it was hard to decipher. The record also exposed Coyne’s love for the Beach Boys. The result of this first step created an unusual rock album that didn’t quite fit into any of the musical landscapes in 1995. The group were shedding their weirdo sides (somewhat), and approaching their tender side, which would reach full capacity on the Soft Bulletin. It’s also a first effort of Wayne Coyne diving into some serious emotional-based songwriting. Clouds Taste Metallic is the last strictly guitar-driven record the Lips recorded, and the best. It was an overlooked album at its time, nestled between the modest commercial success of “She Don’t Use Jelly” and the orchestral opus of Soft Bulletin. “Turn It On” was also released as a single, with even less success, though it was a better tune than “She Don’t Use Jelly.”Ĭlouds Taste Metallic turned 20 years old in 2015, and was suddenly heaped with a ton of praise. It failed to reach the audience that would eventually latch on to them, and it really had no effect on the punk crowd-however modest-they had prior to finding themselves on MTV. Ultimately, “She Don’t Use Jelly” and the LP as a whole didn’t hit very hard in any noticeable way.

Rolling Stone’s Greg Kot gave the record 4 of 5 stars, saying “Unlike previous Lips releases… doesn’t make the listener work as hard to enjoy the journey.” It was a major turning point for the band, who stepped away from the unabashed bleakness of their early years, for a while anyway. Overall the record was much more lighthearted than anything the group previously released, and catchy. In an unexpected twist of events, Flaming Lips became-for a brief blip- offbeat college radio alt-rockers thanks to the modest success of the jangly “She Don’t Use Jelly.” Beavis and Butthead ruthlessly mocked the video in all its handheld camera usage, swirling colors, and lo-fi circle-wipes, which may have bolstered sale a bit. Transmissions From Satellite Heart (1993) But most importantly, it’s reigned in, which the group desperately needed to do at that point. It’s a religiously-obsessed concept album that is dark at its core, and diverse musically in a way the group have never yet experimented, ranging from raw, stripped-down acoustic confessionals to face-melting acid-trip punk smashers. The previous album, Telepathic Surgery, is most known for including a thirty-minute noise track (added when it was reissued on CD.) In A Priest Driven Ambulance has no such gimmicks. The Flaming Lips’ thirst for overdoing it was there right from day one. It maintains the dingy, loud guitar-driven sound, psychotic feedback and bleak off-kilter lyrics of the early years, but it does it with a lot more focus, and with a hint of the sublime, otherworldly quality that would come to define them. That said, their fourth LP, the last of their pre-Warner Brothers indie albums,* In a Priest Driven Ambulance*, is strong. They weren’t terrible, but A.) they would go on to make much better music in the ‘90s and beyond and B.) there were other bands around doing much better work, like the Butthole Surfers. In the 2005 Flaming Lips documentary,* Fearless Freaks*, Butthole Surfers’ Gibby Haynes brazenly states that the Lips “Stole our songs, they imitated us, and Wayne wishes he was me.” He’s referring to the ‘80s, when the group were DIY punk rock road warriors, or better stated, a time few Lips fans care about.