or The Accidental Career... The Flaming Lips 1984-1990
The rather elaborate title refers to how The Flaming Lips vocalist, Wayne Coyne, explains his band's career — or that they managed to have a career at all.
The liner notes, aside from giving a short history of the songs, charts The Flaming Lips' seemingly lucky ability to find acceptance in a variety of different underground scenes and, from there, a record label deal and, subsequently, an "accidental career."
Some of the songs are absolutely sublime; I refer to the epics Jesus Shootin' Heroin and One Million Billionth of a Millisecond on a Sunday Morning and the lo-fi noisy rockers Unconsciously Screamin' and God Walks Among Us Now.
These, despite being a lot rougher and lacking the poignant flourishes of what would be found on the later records, still have a certain panache about them, and they certainly supercede most of the dreck being (and still being) released by most bands.
I guess I would say that this album is pretty hit-and-miss, but, even when it misses it still kind of hits.
For example, the fourth track, Chrome Plated Suicide, sounds like a bad Guns 'N Roses song. Now, normally, I would consider this to be one of those "misses" that I was talking about, however, upon reading the liner notes, I notice that Wayne Coyne has written "I think someone showed me the chords to ""Sweet Child of Mine By Guns 'N Roses"."
Does the fact that they recognise that it sounds like a bad Guns 'N Roses suddenly make it not such a bad song?
I just don't know anymore, and it's not such a bad bad song.
There's also a bizarre instrumental called Hell's Angel Cracker Factory which marries the sounds of motorbikes to guitars to a bizarre angelic, opera singer.
Shit, there's even a 30-second guitar solo song that Wayne recorded while trying to wake up his brother.
None of it makes any real sense.
Rounding out the album, are a couple of cover songs. There's a version of Death Valley '69 by Sonic Youth; Thank You... by Led Zeppelin; After the Goldrush by Neil Young; and a cover of the Sonics' Strychnine, which, for no apparent reason (inexplicable to the band as well) segues into Elvis Costello's Peace, Love and Understanding.
The best part about discovering a band that you really love and that's been kicking around since 1984 is that you get a pretty large back catalogue to pick clean, though, sometimes, that can be pretty wasteful — you know, from a time management point of view.
Pretty much what we have here is a strange journey through the early psycheledic music that The Flaming Lips were making. It doesn't really compare with their later records but it's a pretty good CD nonetheless.
This CD looks like this:
Also, included in this CD is the film clip for the song Unconsciously Screamin', which has pride of place as the seventh song on the CD.
Reviewed on Monday, 22 March 2004