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Tonight: The Flaming Lips

July 27, 2019

Internationally beloved psych rockers The Flaming Lips return to Western New York tonight at Artpark along with the also returning Lennon Claypool Delirium and Particle Kid. The Lips, led by core members Wayne Coyne, Steven Drozd, and Michael Ivins, are practically locals by this point, having recorded everything they’ve put out since 1989 just outside Fredonia with esteemed producer Dave Fridmann, and five WNY shows in the last 10 years (including the 2011 show in Rochester with Kurt Vile). Their last show, at the Rapids Theatre in 2017 with Mac DeMarco, was utterly transcendent, and tonight’s show in support of their recently released 15th studio album Kings Mouth promises to be yet another gloriously ebullient human experience. The Lennon Claypool Delirium are also making a welcome return to the area after a tremendous show three years ago at Canalside that featured Sean Lennon and Les Claypool unleashing one of the[...]

The Flaming Lips – King’s Mouth

April 26, 2019

Two years have passed since Oklahoma’s Flaming Lips last graced us with an album, with the last arriving in the shape of ‘Oczy Moldy.’ Calling anything the Flaming Lips do ‘offbeat’ at this point is a complete redundancy, but some of the criticism they received for that release doesn’t seem to have stung them in the slightest. If anything, they’ve only become more obscure and experimental. The Flaming Lips are, of course, anything but a band of young up and comers. They’ve been with us since the late 1980s and should by rights be settling into middle age comfortably, and sitting back on their riches. That isn’t really the way of this band, though. While high-art concepts and openly pretentious visual and musical ideas are usually the preserve of the young, the Flaming Lips are still showing bands half their age how to employ such notions effectively. Make no mistake;[...]

When Rock Stars Are Jerks

June 9, 2014

Last week, I wrote about the ongoing feud between Jack White and The Black Keys, and why I didn’t think it was anything to get worked up about – musicians talk crap about each other’s work all the time, so what if one artist you like hates another artist you like? But the Rolling Stone interview with White wasn’t just noteworthy because of White’s specific comments about the Keys, it also registered because the dude just comes off like a bit of a prick. He just seems like a bitter guy who, considering his massive success, doesn’t have all that many reasons to be bitter. Ultimately, that was why White decided to apologize: he knew his words had left a bad taste in his fans mouths, and he wanted to correct the problem as quickly as possible. But this raises a larger question: does it matter that our favorite rock stars[...]

Is Discography Dilution A Problem?

April 7, 2014

Last week, a rather strange rumor hit the internet. Apparently, The Flaming Lips were going to record a “companion” album to The Dark Side Of The Moon. The idea was that you played the two albums simultaneously and that they sync up, just like The Wizard Of Oz. Well, the whole thing turned out to be a big April Fool’s prank, but it’s not hard to see why people believed it, or why it was a bit troubling. The Flaming Lips have been doing a lot of this lately – and there’s a case to be made that it’s been  too much. Last year’s The Terror was a wonderful album, and it didn’t get the respect it deserved, but it’s just one of a number of things they’ve been putting out in recent years and the quality tends to vary. First, there was that six-hour long song  that no one completely understands the reasoning[...]