The Flaming Lips Get Comfortably Weird Again With 'Oczy Mlody'
By Tankboy in Arts & Entertainment on Jan 13, 2017 8:00PM
The Flaming Lips at Riot Fest, photo by Tyler LaRiviere/Chicagoist
Today is Wayne Coyne's birthday, so it seems fitting that it's also the day his band, The Flaming Lips, release their new album Oczy Mlody. Their last proper outing, 2013's The Terror, found Coyne and company staring into an existential crisis, marked with scary smears of stabbing noise, unflinching in the steadiness of the band's attack. Oczy Mlody is a rebirth of sorts.
If The Terror was the scream of a midlife crisis, Oczy Mlody is the warm-bath comedown. The music throughout is on the minimalistic side, but the core sound hearkens back to The Soft Bulletin, complete with the return of the band's signature synth-strong arrangements. But this isn't a band that has grown complacent and content to return to their old tricks. Instead The Flaming Lips seem to have taken the opportunity The Terror, along with a number of side projects with collaborators—including unlikely artists Kesha. Foxygen, Erykah Badu and Miley Cyrus—has afforded them to freely follow wherever their wilder inclinations may take them. It's almost as if the band has exorcised the numerous byways that could have taken them off track in order to finally focus on a single, longer, cohesive work.
The album's lyrics seem driven more by the sound of the words than any deeper meaning held within the combined phrases, so this allowed the band to tinker endlessly on the music, treating voice and instruments as the same thing.
It makes Oczy Mlody a mellow listen—a real headphone album—but it's not an "easy listening" album. The Lips never make things that simple. The album surrounds the listener with burbling beats and swooning bass lines that have an initially lulling effect, but then the occasional word will jab you back into attention, or an incongruous element will suddenly insert itself with menace.
On "There Should be Unicorns," the band enlists Reggie Watts' help to achieve the effect, manipulating his voice to intone a menacing outro that shifts the songs from a mellow meditation into a verbal freakout. But then there’s the immediate payoff of “Sunrise (Eyes Of The Young)”—a direct descendent of The Soft Bulletin’s “Suddenly Everything Has Changed”—to make you feel all warm inside again. And, to be honest, this is the tone the majority of the album takes.
The Flaming Lips aren't so much at peace as they are quietly submerging themselves in the more soothing aspects of their sound, while still allowing an uneasy psychedelic creep to insert itself just under the surface and keep you on your toes. The net effect here is that Oczy Mlody is an oddly accessible listen given the band’s more recent track record for challenging both hardcore and casual fans.
Instead of pushing boundaries, the band seems content to instead focus on something that feels like it’s seeping in from another dimension that’s lit by ultraviolet rainbows and seas of molasses. Oczy Mlody doesn’t feel like it is of this, or any other specific moment.
In the end Oczy Mlody is a crowd pleaser. But there’s still something deeply weird at the album’s center. You can’t quite put your finger on it, but don’t be surprised if at times the music has the same effect as Tyler Durden’s movie editing style and you suddenly feel scared or start crying, only to start giggling seconds later.
The Flaming Lips are on tour this spring and play The Riv on April 17.