MUSIC
The Flaming Lips get Embryonic
/ Mark Gluth
10.13.09
It’s probably unavoidable for a band that’s 26 years old––particularly one that hit stride 16 years into their career––that their best work be jargonized and commoditized into a sound that is easily recognized, that the band becomes a brand as well. The Flaming Lips have been a brand ever since… well somewhere between the critically lauded The Soft Bulletin and the first time Wayne Coyne crowd surfed inside an enormous plastic bubble.
But the key to their longevity is that The Flaming Lips have managed to ensure that “The Flaming Lips” is only shorthand for themselves.1 With their self-consciously self confident personas, the compound in Oklahoma, the Christmas On Mars, the stage blood, the suits (be they furry or iconic white), The Flaming Lips feel like local artists who made it big without really changing anything because what they care about was all that they ever really cared about in the first place. The problem with this is that their continued success (and access to major label budgets and timelines) and as such their ability to continue whatever it is that creatively fascinates them is ultimately dependent on our perception of them. As such, what separates The Flaming Lips from their brethren2 is their ability to succeed at the game without really caring.
______
1. Sure, there was a time (the mid 90s) when they attempted to stake their claims on a one acre plot of the then nascent mainstream alternative radio world but that attempt to consciously direct and care about their career path feels like a much different band from a very different place and time. And anyway, when looking through lens their present iteration provides us, it just feels like another phase of their experimentation.
2. Ok, do The Flaming Lips really have any brethren? Looking for bands that straddle high minded artistic intentions and enough success to keep their major label contracts…I guess there’s always Radiohead, but they are younger, less tenured, and far more serious in the face they show the public. They are also more enamored with electronic sounding electronic music (as opposed to the psychedelic sounding electronic music The Flaming Lips make). Really, aside from being on a major label and the critical acclaim, what do they have in common? So who do we have as a point of comparison? As a cautionary tale of these intentions all gone very very wrong, there’s always U2. They have the front man, the spectacle-like live shows, the long time producer (Eno in place of Friedman), they share the relative length of their careers. Where they share similarities with everything U2 does is amped by a factor of a thousand until it reaches pointlessness, and on every point of comparison where they don’t share a similarity, The Flaming Lips are clearly preferable.
But the key to their longevity is that The Flaming Lips have managed to ensure that “The Flaming Lips” is only shorthand for themselves.1 With their self-consciously self confident personas, the compound in Oklahoma, the Christmas On Mars, the stage blood, the suits (be they furry or iconic white), The Flaming Lips feel like local artists who made it big without really changing anything because what they care about was all that they ever really cared about in the first place. The problem with this is that their continued success (and access to major label budgets and timelines) and as such their ability to continue whatever it is that creatively fascinates them is ultimately dependent on our perception of them. As such, what separates The Flaming Lips from their brethren2 is their ability to succeed at the game without really caring.
______
1. Sure, there was a time (the mid 90s) when they attempted to stake their claims on a one acre plot of the then nascent mainstream alternative radio world but that attempt to consciously direct and care about their career path feels like a much different band from a very different place and time. And anyway, when looking through lens their present iteration provides us, it just feels like another phase of their experimentation.
2. Ok, do The Flaming Lips really have any brethren? Looking for bands that straddle high minded artistic intentions and enough success to keep their major label contracts…I guess there’s always Radiohead, but they are younger, less tenured, and far more serious in the face they show the public. They are also more enamored with electronic sounding electronic music (as opposed to the psychedelic sounding electronic music The Flaming Lips make). Really, aside from being on a major label and the critical acclaim, what do they have in common? So who do we have as a point of comparison? As a cautionary tale of these intentions all gone very very wrong, there’s always U2. They have the front man, the spectacle-like live shows, the long time producer (Eno in place of Friedman), they share the relative length of their careers. Where they share similarities with everything U2 does is amped by a factor of a thousand until it reaches pointlessness, and on every point of comparison where they don’t share a similarity, The Flaming Lips are clearly preferable.