Album Review: The Flaming Lips - The Flaming Lips And Heady Fwends

1 July 2012 | 2:16 pm | Ross Clelland

Collaborations with both like-minded and askance fellow travellers were to be expected, although whether blood samples from the participants mixed into the most limited edition vinyl versions was part of the plan is questionable.

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In their ramshackle mix of do-it-yourself, chemically-enhanced hippieness, punk rough edges, and artistic vision, The Flaming Lips were exactly the right people to put together something special for the most recent Record Store Day. Collaborations with both like-minded and askance fellow travellers – some with history, some relatively unknown – were to be expected, although whether blood samples from the participants mixed into the most limited edition vinyl versions was part of the plan is questionable. However, the mix of those involved – and merit of some of the results – meant demand for a more widely available version. Which this be.

Simply, it could be The Lips' familiar fuzzy and scrappy noise with voices other than lead Lip Wayne Coyne's helium-edged keenings. But, in places, it's a bit more than that. Sure, Nick Cave does his default Grinderman-lite preacher-turning-into-a-werewolf yelping over You Man? Human??? (Lips-style idiosyncratic titling is still in effect, obviously), and in Do It! Yoko Ono yells “Do it!” over and over with increasing hysteria, as you'd expect.

There's a dirty mechanical edge to 2012 (You Must Be Upgraded), as Ke$ha and Biz Markie jerkily swing at each other. Conversely, the Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros co-construction, Helping The Retarded Find God (repeat title comment as above), has an almost sweet pop melody fizz to it. Our own Tame Impala are in on Children Of The Moon, which actually sounds more like one of their (his?) titles. 

Throw in a nigh-on 11-minute version of First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, fronted by Erykah Badu, and this is every bit as expectedly unexpected and tangential as you probably thought it might be.

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