THE FLAMING LIPS
American Head
Space Commander Coyne and friends’ sentimental journey.
Over the past decade, The Flaming Lips have seemed joyously free from commercial concerns – maybe a little too much so, in fact. From collaborations with Miley Cyrus to six-hour songs featuring strings of charity sponsors read out by Sean Lennon, they’ve obviously been having fun, even if some fans weren’t always feeling it quite as keenly. American Head, however, feels like a concerted about turn towards more accessible shores.
THE TEXTURES ARE LESS ABRASIVE BUT THE IDEAS
ARE NO LESS ORIGINAL.
If that notion disappoints fans of the band’s more outré output, they can rest easy in the knowledge that while the textures are less abrasive and the tunes more immediate, the ideas here are no less idiosyncratic and original.
Lyrically, the conceptual thread of American Head isn’t as overtly evident as the one that ran through last year’s King’s Mouth album, whose story was partly narrated by the dulcet west London tones of The Clash’s Mick Jones (an obvious choice to tell the story of a giant monarch who sacrificed himself to save his subjects from an avalanche and was rewarded by his head being cut off and cast in steel). But it feels closer to home and considerably more emotionally resonant. Chief Lip Wayne Coyne and his long-time lieutenant/multi-instrumentalist Steven Drozd have explained that American Head is inspired by the juvenile misadventures of the pair and their peers in their native Oklahoma, and there’s a wistful, dreamy nostalgia to these songs that is instantly irresistible.
Will You Return/When You Come Down is a sky-high piano elegy to those they have lost, centred around a sumptuously sad major-to-minor chord slide, over which ‘The ghosts floating around your bed hear it said… now all your friends are dead.’ Later, Dinosaurs On The Mountain has a captivating childlike awe to it, brought to life by an oceanic swell of harmonies and an irresistibly dewy-eyed melody.
Elsewhere, it offers a vision of Midwestern youth that seems to be positively self-destructive: ‘Forget that we’re alive,’ intones Coyne on At The Movies On Quaaludes, ‘As we destroy our brains ’til we believe we’re dead/It’s the American dream in the American Head.’
The gorgeous love song My Religion Is You finishes off the set in beautifully open-hearted style, bringing to a close a record that represents another unexpected change of direction for this most mercurial of bands. While not so long ago they seemed to be in danger of becoming musical merry pranksters full of arch surrealism and madcap schemes, they’ve suddenly rediscovered the big, tuneful heart in their chests. And you’ll be only too happy to listen to it beating.