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| A great example of a cash-in gone
right, this release has been timed to capitalise
on the success of this year's "Yoshimi Battles
The Giant Robots". "Acid" and "Egg"
collect all the early Lips you will ever need; four
complete albums plus rarities, cover versions (including
a amusingly truncated stab at Led Zep's "Thank
You" minus the tricky bits), demos
and little bits of silence between the tracks. The
Flaming Lips started out very much as an extraordinarily
inspired garage band, and the rough quality of tracks
on "The Flaming Lips EP" and their full-length
debut "Hear It Is" is appropriately grungy
(although not in the sloppily metallic Seattle sense).
The band's barely-contained experimental streak
(incorporating the use of found sounds and Pink
Floyd samples) and idiosyncratic lyrical preoccupations
set them apart from the legion of instrumentally-challenged
'80s hardcore bands. These assets would eventually
blossom into fuzz-pop gold dust on later albums
like "Clouds Taste Metallic", "The
Soft Bulletin" and "Yoshimi". But
here their conflation of punk inability and hippie
sympathies constitute a more approachable Butthole
Surfers, or Black Flag with the aggression replaced
by dazed navel-gazing and wide-eyed wonder. |
| Wayne Coyne has recently gone on
record saying that violence need not necessarily
be the last resort when it comes to solving problems,
and listening back to his '80s work, this comment
makes sense. The career trajectory of the Lips can
be likened to a particularly prolonged and violent
birth, the group transcending a lack of skill and,
presumably money, forcing originality into the world
with little concern for the mess. Some of the music
here is ugly, in a good way, but some of it approaches
the kind of beauty fans and recent converts have
come to expect. "Chrome
Plated Suicide" (from '88's "Telepathic
Surgery") is a fuzzy Phil Spector-esque epic
which unfolds its monumental melancholy gracefully
and gradually. "We were born to suffer some",
keens Coyne. It's worth noting that his voice started
off as an abrasive Iggy/Erickson drawl, getting
higher and higher as the years passed until it resembled
Neil Young lost in the toy department. All this
and ascension metaphors too! Gee whizz! |
| Multiple-disc releases usually
elicit a groan from this reviewer (a dedicated fan
of brevity and concision in music) but "Acid"
(3 CDs) and "Egg" (2 CDs) are a universe
away from the usual multidisc tedium. Sure, you
probably won't often feel the need to listen to
the whole of both sets back to back, but as a huge
treasure trove of consistently interesting and frequently
inspirational music they're great to have around
to dip into now and then, and indispensable for
hardcore fans and completists. |
| review:
joe
stannard (kilamuk@yahoo.com) |
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