Brexit, Boris, Syria...Trump. After a year spent teetering on the brink, it perhaps makes sense to want to lock away the outside world and retreat to some far away fantasy land. With titles like Listening To The Frogs With Demon Eyes and One Night While Hunting For Faeries And Witches And Wizards To Kill, ‘Oczy Mlody’, the Flaming Lips’ 14th LP, offers the chance to do just that, even if it’s not quite the magic potion it occasionally threatens to be.
In reality, though, saying that a modern Flaming Lips LP is completely out there is like saying the world is round. But it’s also fair to say that each Lips LP is wacky in its own way. Whether it’s the millennial space-pop of ‘Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots’ or their recent psychedelic take on the Beatles’ ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’, Wayne Coyne and co. are never afraid to experiment, pulling and stretching their music every which way just to see if something new and interesting will emerge.
‘Oczy Mlody’ - which means “eyes of the young” in Polish - is weird in a vibrant, vital kind of way. Each instrument sounds as though it’s been drenched in plutonium and glazed with sunlight, with phaser-like synth stabs popping up on Nigdy Nie (Never No) and How?? to give a sense of urgency when things get a little too dreamy.
Then there’s Coyne’s ubiquitous falsetto, always delivered with a sickly sweet fragility that naturally melds with the ethereal glitch-pop on offer.
But sometimes the Lips’ willingness to experiment with sound results in a track that’s just as amorphous as the deep space nebulae they so often evoke. Listening To The Frogs… constantly morphs and meanders like a dodgy prog record from the ‘70s, whereas Do Glowy is devoid of focus altogether. Such misfires are arguably a hangover from the sprawling soundscapes of ‘The Terror’, and perhaps a necessary side effect of creating music that occupies the weird space between mainstream and avant-garde sensibilities.
There’ll come a point on ‘Oczy Mlody’ when Coyne’s lack of interest in the pressures of the outside world might start to rankle. But once you reach its final track, you’ll be glad that artists like the Flaming Lips are able to offer some semblance of normality by doing what they’ve always done, even if the music they make is anything but straightforward.
The Flaming Lips Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:
Sat January 21 2017 - LONDON O2 Academy Brixton
Sun January 22 2017 - MANCHESTER Academy
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