“Where does outer space end? / It’s sort of hard to imagine.” Amazingly, it wasn’t until the band’s fourth full-length album, Clouds Taste Metallic, that Coyne asked this wonderfully zonked-out, dorm-room question. But even if the words don’t entirely make sense, the screeching guitars, juxtaposed with an understated melody, are what make “Queer of God” irresistible. Coyne seems gob-smacked by a beautiful woman who, apparently, is a military pilot. In other words, don’t look to the title of “Pilot Can at the Queer of God” as a clue into what the song’s about. But the Lips’ brand of frenetic strangeness continued. Transmissions From the Satellite Heart found the band moving (barely) into the alt-rock mainstream, as “She Don’t Use Jelly” landed them on MTV and put them on tour with Stone Temple Pilots. “Hold Your Head” would pave the way for the far more elaborate, almost operatic sonic concoctions the band would create on subsequent albums like The Soft Bulletin and Embryonic. In “Hold Your Head,” Coyne informs the listener, “We didn’t come to negotiate / We didn’t come so we could wait / We didn’t come to change the world / We didn’t come to fuck girls.” Over echoing keyboards and slithering bits of guitar, the singer seems to be drawing some sort of line in the sand, standing up for the importance of fully feeling emotions as opposed to giving in to cynicism or being seduced by celebrity. On this album-closer from Hit to Death in the Future Head, the Flaming Lips borrow from the Doors’ playbook to create a psychedelic head-trip. Amidst all the head-banging bravura, it’s fun to hear Coyne intone goofy, heartfelt romantic lines like “I hold your electric toaster while standin’ in your bathtub of love.” The Lips have since grown into a far more sophisticated band, both lyrically and sonically, but it’s nice to be reminded how hard they used to thrash. The band’s influences are readily apparent on “Mountain Side”: Vocally, Coyne could almost pass for Jane’s Addiction frontman Perry Farrell, while the guitars evoke the towering force of Led Zeppelin.
In their early days, the Lips were unapologetic rockers, merging grunge’s noise with garage’s clattering intimacy.
The weirdness and experimentation would come later. All of 25 at the time, he sounds like one more insecure guy professing his love, and as “With You” segues from campfire sing-along to fuzzed-up guitar workout, we hear a band figuring out the rudiments of pop songwriting. The first song on the Flaming Lips’ first album, Hear It Is, starts off as a lilting acoustic ballad, but the mood is broken by Coyne declaring awkwardly, “When I walk with you / I feel weird / When I talk with you / I feel weird.” Thirty years later, it’s downright odd to hear him singing in such a straightforward, slightly low tone rather than the aching falsetto he’d eventually utilize. In fact, it’s amazing to think that they all come from the same group of Midwestern hippies. So in honor of the Lips’ forthcoming Oczy Mlody, we decided to select 10 songs that represent the best of the group’s deep cuts, while also showing how their groovy, fluid sound has morphed over the years, going from light to dark and back again. 1999’s The Soft Bulletin and 2002’s Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, in particular, became go-to albums for people still reeling from the terror and sadness of 9/11, wrapping the records’ fragile, resilient songs around themselves like a security blanket. Inspired by punk and Pink Floyd, psychedelia and grunge, the Oklahoma group first came to prominence in the early 1990s thanks to the quirky alt-rock smash “She Don’t Use Jelly,” continuing to refine their approach until, by the end of the 1990s, they were seen as elder statesmen and folk heroes.īoth experimental and deeply melodic, the Flaming Lips address the heavy issues - war, death, love, failure - with the cosmic, wide-eyed wonder of a smiling stoner. “I don’t even think we do now.”Ĭoyne’s just being modest: Three decades later, the Lips stand as one of indie rock’s most beloved and longest-running institutions - not to mention one of its most distinctive. “We didn’t have any identity that we were satisfied with,” Wayne Coyne recalled to Spin in 2013 about those early days. Taking his place was his older brother Wayne, who’s been the group’s frontman and shaggy-haired, blissed-out leader ever since. The Flaming Lips, who started out in 1983, began in search of a musical direction - and then a lead singer, when original frontman Mark Coyne left the band two years later.
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