Album Review: "Oczy Mlody" by The Flaming Lips

THE FLAMING LIPS

*Oczy Mlody*

(Warner Bros)

For some Flaming Lips’ fans, this will forever be the album most associated with the band’s collaboration with pop star Miley Cyrus, the album they released after serving as her backup band for her tour the previous year. “We A Family,” the last track on their latest effort (the 14th album since 1986), features Cyrus on backing vocals on one of the most upbeat and optimistic tracks of the 12. Singer Wayne Coyne, vocals heavily distorted, sings amid chirpy synth effects and over-fuzzed beats, eventually letting Cyrus take over singing duties, ending with the repetitive and saccharine chorus “we a family...we a family.” The majority of the other tracks are slower tempo drug-themed explorations, arranged mostly with layers of electronic instrumentation (long gone are the days of the Lips’ analogue art punk sound). Some song titles are more interesting than the songs themselves--“Listening to the Frogs with Demon Eyes,” for example--with “How??” and “The Castle” representing the band’s best songwriting efforts. “One Night While Hunting for Faeries and Witches and Wizards to Kill” is interesting for its layered percussion (from taps to distorted kettle drums) backed by cricket and frog night noises. It’s an enchanting backdrop for Coyne’s languid vocal delivery as he weaves his psychedelic tale. But that’s balanced by the more pretentious “There Should Be Unicorns,” featuring guest vocalist Reggie Watts lecturing listeners in a pseudo-intellectual hippie persona: “...And we will be high and the love generator will be turned up to its maximum. And we’ll get higher, when at last, the sun comes up in the morning and we will collapse under the weight of the ancient earth...And it will be the end of the world and the beginning of a new love.” It’s a little much, but the Lips were never about moderation. 5/10 These "fearless freaks from Oklahoma City" will be in concert April 17, 2017, at the Riviera Theater in Chicago...Jill and I will be there.
Here's the link to the print version of this review, on page 24 of the February 2017 issue of Illinois Entertainer magazine.