The Flaming Lips ... Naked!

November 27, 2005... Recently, I saw The Fearless Freaks, Bradley Beesley's documentary about The Flaming Lips. It is the best rockumentary I have ever seen. Sure, Beesley had great music to work with, and, as his film shows, some of the aw-shucks-nicest subjects one could ask for, too. But Beesley used a technicolour dime bag of cinematic tricks to splice those elements together in a visually arresting way.

All that aside, I seem to be out-of-synch with majority opinion on the Flaming Lips' 1999 album, The Soft Bulletin. I do not think it was the "most important" or "best" record of the 1990s. Nope. Not unless you discount all the other ones that were more important or better.

One of the things you can't help but notice about The Soft Bulletin is that it is a very cinematic sounding album. The arrangements are ambitious, like in a movie soundtrack, and there are great twists of melody that are hard to predict. Oh, and the songs are heavily orchestrated. Sort of. And that is problemo numero uno.

Orchestral accompaniment on The Soft Bulletin is provided by a synthesizer that sounds horribly synthetic. In fact, in song after song, one could be forgiven for thinking that a track had been set aside for the sort of hissing white noise one encounteres in a dentist's office, or perhaps for background music from films nobody wants to see. And that is probelmo numero two.

In The Fearless Freaks, one fan says that the Flaming Lips have great taste, but some of the things that seem to have inspired The Soft Bulletin are actually quite distasteful. We're talking 1970s top forty radio, here, folks. Not the album-oriented stuff your long-haired older brother'd listen to on FM late at night, but the sort of schlock on the AM dial that'd crackle through the single speaker on the front dashboard of your dad's turd coupe. That's not good taste, folks. That's child abuse. But wait, it gets worse...

We're also talking soundtracks to Movies of the Week, here, and overwrought animated Disney flicks. And in "What is the Light?" the synthetic brass plays a part that sounds like an out-take from an episode of the 1970s firefighter drama Emergency. Yecch!

The album's absolute low point, though, is the piano solo in "Waiting for a Superman." It sounds like it was played on the upright piano in an elementary school music class--which is appropriate considering how thoroughly the melody reminds me of the theme to Degrassi Junior High.

The Flaming Lips - Waitin' for a Superman

So, do I hate The Soft Bulletin? No! There are things about the album that I absolutely love.

I have always loved vocalist Wayne Coyne's cracked warble; doubly so on this album where his lyrics have taken a turn away from the silliness and superficiality of the band's past, and toward the more honest and heartfelt. This is a very human record. The songs make me feel all warm and teary-eyed, which is a very refreshing for a rock record to do.

Listen to the lyrics to "Waiting for a Superman" again. Better still, check out the lyrics to "Spiderbite Song," wherein Coyne expresses relief about various friends overcoming adversity: "I was glad that it didn't destroy you / How sad that would be / 'Cause if it destroyed you / It would destroy me." Nice!

The drumming is pretty awesome, too. Steven Drozd may or may not be the world's most inventive or tight drummer, but he definitely sounds like one of the world's most powerful drummers on The Soft Bulletin. Mind you, some of that power derives from being louder in the mix than a drummer "should be" and distorting like a mofo. But what a terrific idea!

Indeed, the production, including the decision to mix the drums so ear-splittingly loud, is the one other thing about the album that is a sheer, unadulterated pleasure. Echoes abound. And, here and there, disembodied electronic beeps sound in one ear, then the other. Elsewhere, ambient sounds, crickets chirping and sprinklers spitting, are added to the mix. Totally pyschedelic, man...

The album has other virtues, too, but they are all stained.

The song order and pacing, for example, is nearly perfect. The intro to the cinematic tenth track, "Gash," sounds like a climax. The astoundingly good eleventh track, "Feeling Yourself Disintegrate," sounds like the sort of song that would play as the credits roll. And the twelfth track, "Sleeping on the Roof," is a soothing instrumental to accompany the patrons as they leave the theatre. Perfect... Except there is a track thirteen and a track fourteen--alternate mixes of songs heard earlier on the album--which ruin the mood.

I should add that the album drags a bit even before it gets to the tenth track. If it were up to me, I'd lose the third track, "The Spark That Bled," altogether. It, alone among all the songs on the album doesn't hold together well, and sounds very much like a series of riffs forced together. With "The Spark That Bled" out of the way, the tenth track would arrive six minutes earlier, before my attention starts to wander.

The Flaming Lips - A Spoonful Weighs a Ton

Once, The Soft Bulletin was on my to-sell pile. It isn't anymore. It's a keeper, for sure. It's just not as good as everyone says it is.

If it was shorter and the synthesizer bits were replaced by guitar and bass, or perhaps not replaced at all... Or, if it was shorter and the synthesizer bits were replaced by a real orchestra, like in the Moody Blues' Days of Future Passed...

Completely naked or dressed to the nines, The Soft Bulletin would dazzle. Unfortunately, she's wearing polyester instead.

*****

I wanted to add a couple bonus tracks by other bands that I am reminded of when listening to The Soft Bulletin, but I don't have access to any late-period Led Zeppelin and I'm too lazy to find the Bark Psychosis song I have in mind. Instead, here's a track from earlier in the Flaming Lips' career, when things were a little less serious and much less synthethic.

The Flaming Lips - Be My Head

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