Album of the month | March 2023
I can't pinpoint exactly when I heard The Soft Bulletin as an album for the first time, but I can easily pinpoint the first time I heard The Flaming Lips the first time. I was watching "Alternative Nation" on MTV waiting for the video for Röyksopp's Eple or Poor Leno, can't remember which anymore, and the video for Race for the Prize came on. Even though my mind probably wasn't in the Flaming Lips mindset at that time I can clearly remember that the song and the video crawled into my mind. I don't have any recollection of diving deeper in to the band or the music then. but I guess I kept hearing Race for the Prize from time to time.
Fast forward a couple of years and I bought Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots and from there on I was sold. I went backwards through The Flaming Lips catalogue. Although I liked songs like She Don't Use Jelly a lot it was The Soft Bulletin that made it's mark on me. Again, specially Race for the Prize and the beautiful Waiting for Superman. A song I have fallen in love with several times since, especially the Iron & Wine cover-version.
Earlier this winter I pulled out the album again and I listened to it non-stop for a couple of weeks and I like the album even more now. What I found though was that I now probably like the spacier tracks best, the ones that are almost more like mood pieces than songs. Like The Spark that Bled, What is the Light? and Feeling Yourself Disintegrate. The album also deals with mortality in a beautiful way and I guess this is a theme that hits harder the older we get. A song like Suddenly Everything Has Changed hits a lot harder now than when I was younger.
When you listen to the earlier Flaming Lips album you'd be hard pressed to guess that they just a few years later would release this pop masterpiece. At times almost baroque-pop like the Beach Boys or the Zombies - at other times space-rock like Pink Floyd at its best. Much of this could be credited to Steven Drozd really finding his place in the band. It's also the same Drozd who are hiting those heavy, Bonham-like drums. All during the same time he was dealing with some real personal demons. It's the sound of a band making music for their own pleasure with no regard of what would sell or not.
The Soft Bulletin is a modern classic. (And what about that brilliant cover. That's Neal Cassady doing some Acid Test dancing you know).
The Flaming Lips - The Soft Bulletin was released by Warner Bros, May 17th 1999.
Comments