Author: Nathaniel FitzGerald

Record #164: The Flaming Lips – The Soft Bulletin (1999)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Too often, The Soft Bulletin’s significance is attributed to the creative leap forward it was for the Flaming Lips. It marked the moment the acid-dropping punks decided to get serious and make some seriously beautiful pop music.

And while that’s true, it discounts the strength the album holds on its own…

Personally, the first Lips record I ever heard was 2009’s Embryonic, which played more like the psychedelic soundtrack to a 1950’s sci-fi horror movie than anything the Flaming Lips would have turned out.

And that, along with “Do You Realize,” “She Don’t Use Jelly,” and the Postal Service’s cover of “Suddenly Everything has Changed” were my context for hearing this record.

And I instantly loved it.

The urgent, overdriven drums, the synth strings, the sprinkling harp, the extended instrumental passages, and Wayne Coyne’s shaking, wild-eyed voice that ties everything together. It’s an album of unveiled optimism, young love, friendship, and occasionally drugs (this is the Flaming Lips, isn’t it?) that begs the listener to live and be alive, even in the face of hopelessness.

And fourteen years later, there hasn’t been much to rival moments like the opening strains of “The Race for the Prize” or the instrumental groove in “The Spark that Bled” or the closing crescendo of “Feeling Yourself Disintegrate.” It’s an absolute classic, regardless of its context in the Flaming Lips’ or anyone else’s discography.

Record #129: Deerhunter – Cryptograms/Fluorescent Grey EP (2007)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald
And now, we move into one of my favorite discographies in recent history, if not all time.​If you don’t already know, Deerhunter is a force of nature in the indie world, both socially and musically. The group itself is almost less of a band than it is a collaboration between two of the most prolific figures in indie rock, Bradford Cox (a.k.a.

Atlas Sound) and Locket Pundt (a.k.a. Lotus Plaza), even if technically, the band released two albums and an EP before any official release from either one.

Despite their success, Deerhunter is the archetypal garage band–a group of young bucks banging out songs who love listening to music as much as they love creating it, as evidenced by the band blog, curated mostly by Bradford Cox, and the hour long Krautrock version of My Sherona played at an Atlas Sound show.

But despite their prolificacy and media frenzy around them (read: Cox, the most controversial member of the group), Deerhunter first and foremost makes excellent music. Cryptograms, their second album and breakthrough (and the first Deerhunter album Cox doesn’t disown) is absolutely, one hundred percent excellent, and it remains my favorite. The album is split into two halves (on vinyl, two discs). The first half is more atmospheric, with an occasional song peering out of the ambient fog of droning guitars and synthesizers with meaty bass lines and heavily-echoed vocals. “Lake Somerset” veers closely to ambient dance punk, while “Octet,” but for its one-note bass pound, might escape a casual listener for its ambience.

The second half is the conceptual opposite: of the five tracks, only one (“Tape Hiss Orchid”) is an instrumental. The rest are hazy pop songs with hypnotic pounds and shoegazy guitar jangles over trance-like vocals. With the inclusion of the Fluorescent Grey EP on the fourth side, this record almost becomes two separate albums, one more ambient focused and the other pop-song centric.

​But the remarkable thing is, they do both well, impressing on each half of the record. Sadly though, as their career has progressed, Deerhunter (and Atlas Sound) have moved away from the atmospheric aspects of their palette. And while the rest of their catalogue is just as excellent, no one does ambient indie rock the way they do here, leaving a void that only Cryptograms can fill.