The Flaming Lips
"American Head"
(Warner Records, (ASTERISK)(ASTERISK)(ASTERISK){)
For the last decade or so of their 35-year career, Oklahoma's Flaming Lips have doubled down on their love of extremes, from the abrasive "The Terror" to full-album covers of "Dark Side of the Moon" and "Sgt. Pepper's" to numerous collaborations with Miley Cyrus. They've been fascinating, but inconsistent.
In its open-heartedness, love of melody, and Dave Fridmann's expansive production, "American Head" recalls their mid-period heyday of 1999's exuberant "The Soft Bulletin."
Leader Wayne Coyne wrote a set of semi-autobiographical songs inspired by imagining his drug-dealing older brother encountering Tom Petty's early band Mudcrutch when they passed through in Tulsa in the early '70s.
The Lips have always been a trippy, psychedelic band, but this album is explicit in its drug references, often detailing problematic consequences. The chorus of the lovely "Mother I've Taken LSD" is "And now I see the sadness in the world."
"At the Movies on Quaaludes" is similar: "As we destroy our brains til we believe we're dead."
The tone is often wistful and haunted, anchored in Steven Drozd's stately melodies and Coyne's thin, high vocals. But the songs often open up and soar.
The band, now a septet, slides easily from the ethereal, orchestral "Flowers of Neptune 6" (one of three tracks with Kacey Musgraves) to the more electronic "You n' Me Sellin' Weed" to the contemplative guitar ballad "My Religion is You."
American Head reveals a Flaming Lips that is surprisingly tempered and grounded but still impressively adventurous.
_ Steve Klinge
