Consider the blunt imagery of "Jesus Shootin' Heroin" or the clearly humorous yells and climax of "Charlie Manson Blues" as two examples of many. Texas psych types like the 13th Floor Elevators and the Red Krayola were clear forebears - one can easily imagine Roky Erickson coming up with shaggy dog stories and music for the likes of "Trains, Brains and Rain." The group's own uniqueness comes through, though. If anybody was kin at the time, it would be the Meat Puppets, with perhaps a little less interest in high lonesome sounds. Throughout Hear It Is, there's a gleeful "try what works" approach that would only become stronger later - the band may have been punk-inspired and birthed, but Coyne and company drew on everything from country & western to classic rock crunch and more there are even some clear early goth rock touches. The gentle acoustic strumming that starts the album on "With You" or the steady pace and mournful singing on "Godzilla Flick" shows that subtlety was as much a part of the game as stomping, fried electric guitar insanity. It isn't as completely discontinuous as might be thought, though - Coyne's vision was already distinctly gone, in ways that most bands would kill for. Instead, it's raunchy bar-band-gone-insane fun or calmer but not too wracked ruminations from Coyne, with music to match. #The flaming lips hear it is crackedNo swirling orchestral parts, no Beach Boys-on-Mars homages, even Wayne Coyne's immediately recognizable cracked fracture of a voice isn't present. The band have inspired the likes of Mercury Rev, Animal Collective, Super Furry Animals, and of Montreal.Hearing Hear It Is years later, after all the band had done up to the new century, makes for an almost surreal experience. Recent releases like ‘American Head’ show they can still offer something new whilst harking back to their tried-and-tested prog-pop sound. The Lips have put some of the most innovative records in psychedelia to tape, including the dreamy space pop masterpiece ‘The Soft Bulletin’ and the playful trip which is ‘Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots’. The Lips have become known for their stunts they’ve made films (‘Christmas On Mars’), covered albums like ‘The Stone Roses’ in full, put the blood of fellow musicians into a vinyl, and placed a flash drive with four songs on into a skull made out of gummy sweets. Some loved the notion that friends had to get together as a collective to play it, others thought it was pretentious and criticised it as a gimmick. The album contained four discs, designed to be played at exactly the same time. Their eighth record ‘Zaireeka’ divided fans and critics NME gave it a 10, Pitchfork gave it a 0.0. ‘Clouds Taste Metallic’ furthered the psych and the arrangements got much more complex, developing an original approach to instrumentation. Their breakthrough largely fell into the alternative rock, indie, and noise pop camps, but the strange lyricism of Wayne Coyne hinted at the colourful whimsy of the late 1960s. The Oklahoman group broke away from the noise-filled, Butthole Surfers-inspired mayhem of earlier releases with 1993’s ‘Transmissions From the Satellite Heart’, scoring a few hits with ‘Turn It On’ and the anthemic banger ‘She Don’t Use Jelly’. The Lips’ earlier work is as scrappy as they come, and it took them roughly six albums and ten years together to make a break in the music scene. Oh my gawd!!! The Flaming Lips are the ultimate neo-psychedelia group a constantly wavering entity who innovate as much as they borrow from psychedelia’s past glories.
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