neo psychedelic

Record #992: The Flaming Lips – American Head (2020)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Few bands have had the run that The Flaming Lips had between The Soft Bulletin and The Terror. They managed to several albums of remarkably consistent quality while also sounding nothing alike, traversing from baroque symphonic rock to technicolor glam pop to dystopian psych freakout. While you could easily credit their entire body of work as one of the most singular and inventive careers in music, that period is one of my favorite runs of album in any discography.

I’ve lost track since. I said to some friends recently that I missed when The Flaming Lips were good. It’s maybe more accurate to say that I’ve been unable to keep up with the deluge of projects well enough to sort the inconsequential experiments from the proper albums. But out of this haze, American Head emerges with a seismic scope that combines the best parts of their disparate threads into one immense and gorgeous whole.

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Record #974: My Morning Jacket – Evil Urges (2008)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

When you’re as obsessive about music as I am, you’re constantly on the hunt. As frequently as I might buy a record though, I’m always listening to several new albums while I’m getting into the ones I end up buying. As much as my collection serves as a snapshot of what I was into at any given point in my life, a lot of what I was listening to is out of frame.

My Morning Jacket is one of those bands that has existed just outside of my financial commitment for a long time—especially this record. There were a number of times where I was actively debating between buying a copy of Evil Urges and something else, and Evil Urges never won out. That is, until a few months ago where a copy popped up at the right place at the right time and we reunited.

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Record #852: The Mars Volta – The Bedlam In Goliath (2008)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Unlike my mysterious ignorance of Amputechture, I know exactly why I ignored The Bedlam In Goliath. 

By the time this record came out, my tastes had shifted significantly. My musical diet was still peppered with similarly experimental acts that I obsessed over at the same time I discovered De-Loused, like Radiohead and Sigur Rós. But for the most part, my tastes were far simpler: I was devouring acts like Bon Iver, Fleet Foxes, Phosphorescent, and whatever else La Blogotheque and The Black Cab Sessions were featuring.

I had come to desire simplicity. Even as a musician, I had “matured” past the progressive post-hardcore of my high school band and honed my craft as a solo singer-songwriter. I might have still appreciated the first couple Mars Volta records, but I wasn’t returning to them often.

So when Bedlam was released, I had little patience for their maximalist prog, their meandering jam sessions, or the claims of a cursed Ouija board tormenting them—however, I did largely agree with the original engineer who quit the project saying, “You’re trying to do something very bad with this record, you’re trying to make me crazy and you’re trying to make people crazy.”

But now that I’ve gotten older—and made peace with my previous selves—I’ve come to realize just how wrong I was about this record. Is it a bloated, self-indulgent behemoth that is often a taxing listen? Probably, but all of the criticisms leveled against it can be directed towards the albums that I love either, so…

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Record #851: The Mars Volta – Amputechture (2006)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald / 1 Comment

I’ve been trying to figure out why it’s taken me so long to get into Amputechture. It was released right in the throes of my first obsession with the group: I had heard De-Loused in the Comatorium just a year earlier, and it exploded my mind. A friend had burned me a copy of Frances the Mute over the summer, and I would often leave the albums playing on repeat in my dorm room.

So why would I not immediately devour the follow-up? In my memory, I didn’t hear Amputechture until after I had moved home from Chicago in late 2009. At that time, I had bought into the hipster snob narrative that the Mars Volta was a bloated, overindulgent prog rock outfit that released two great albums. The inflated vinyl prices on the later albums didn’t give me much incentive to challenge that notion.

But the most recent batch of reissues happened to coincide with some extra playing around money, so I figured I might as well fill in the gap in my collection between Frances and Octahedron. 

And boy, am I glad I did.

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Record #567: MGMT – Congratulations (2010)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

A hit song is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it can thrust you into widespread acclaim. But on the other, it can pigeonhole you, your audience forever using your old stuff as a metric. Your work progresses, but your fans are stuck in the past. For a great example, remind yourself that “Creep” is still Radiohead’s biggest hit.

For another example, look to MGMT, who had three such songs. “Time to Pretend” and “Kids” especially were already several years old by the time they appeared on Oracular Spectacular. And overall, that synthpop sound wasn’t very representative of that record. If you just look at the neo-psychedelic freak folk on the deep cuts, Congratulations is a faithful follow up.

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Record #566: MGMT – Oracular Spectacular (2007)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Every once in a while, a new act comes around that lands like a nuclear bomb. No matter where you go, you can’t escape them—not that you’d want to.

MGMT was this act. And their debut full-length, Oracular Spectacular was one of those rare records that was as poppy as it was bizarre, as dancy as it was experimental. Tracks from this album appeared on Top 40 radio, TV commercials, and even the most cynical hipster’s year-end list.

It was a groundswell, and rightly so.

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Record #536: The Mars Volta – Frances the Mute (2005)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

When the Mars Volta rose out of the ashes of At the Drive-In, many fans and critics were disappointed in the noodly, indulgent psych soundscapes of De-Loused in the Comatorium.

But when it came time to record its follow up, they paid those complaints no mind. Instead, Frances the Mute leans even harder into all of De-Loused’s idiosyncrasies in an even more ambitious record of prog jams and noise rock.

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Record #185: The Flaming Lips – The Terror (2013)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Economics teaches us that the more abundant something is, the less appealing we will find it. For example, if you eat one cookie, it will be delicious, but if you eat 30 cookies, you will soon be sick of cookies. For another example, the Flaming Lips released their last record in 2009. Since then, they have released a song-for-song remake of The Dark Side of the Moon, a split with Neon Indian, a USB exclusive track available only inside of a marijuana flavored gummy skull, a 70 minute, 13 track collection of collaborations with everyone imaginable, covers of songs by Madonna, The Beatles, and more, a compilation of their first several records (along with those same vinyl reissues), a URL-exclusive twenty-four hour long psych-freakout track, twelve YouTube videos meant to be played simultaneously, live performances of The Soft Bulletin and Yoshimi in full, assorted car commercial singles, Wayne Coyne’s constant twitter feed, and on and on and on and on and on…

So, economically speaking, The Terror should simply fade in to the constant barrage of nonsense that Wayne Coyne & Co. is constantly spouting out.

But I guess The Flaming Lips don’t understand economics very well.

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