![]() ![]() On the one hand, hooray for a band resolutely refusing to cave in to commercial pressure. ![]() They released unwatchable Christmas films, 24-hour long songs, experimental double albums that frontman Wayne Coyne promoted with the suggestion that it “would have made a better single album if only the artist could have focused themselves”, a series of releases on which they covered The Dark Side of the Moon, Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and the Stone Roses’ eponymous debut in their entirety, a collaboration with Ke$ha that was pressed on vinyl containing Ke$ha’s menstrual blood, etc. Its successor, 2002’s Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, sold half a million copies in the US alone and won a Grammy, which the Flaming Lips seemed to take as a signal to let their imaginations run riot in the most confounding way. ![]() Like a number of bands signed in the post-grunge goldrush, they had a minor novelty hit – 1994’s She Don’t Use Jelly – and that appeared to be that.Īnd then the damnedest thing happened: the Flaming Lips released the extraordinary 1999 album The Soft Bulletin, developed an equally extraordinary live show and became something like a mainstream success. When they were signed to a major label in 1991, it looked like one of the grandest acts of folly yet in the crazed search to find the next Nirvana: their debut release under their new deal was an EP called Yeah I Know It’s a Drag, But Wastin’ Pigs Is Still Radical. They began life as a minor psychedelic alt-rock band with seemingly zero mainstream commercial potential beyond hand-to-mouth survival, on the same US post-punk gig circuit that supported umpteen bands with zero mainstream commercial potential in the mid-80s. B efore we turn to the Flaming Lips’ 15th studio album, it’s worth considering the extremely peculiar path that has brought the Oklahoma trio to this point. ![]()
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