Oklahoma City experimental, psychedelic, alternative rock band The Flaming Lips have spent the last four and a bit decades casually and gleefully ripping up their own rule book. Skillfully transitioning from noisy, underground, art-rock oddities to arena-conquering, mainstream-courting, dream-pop crossover heroes, and back to explorative, psych-cult elder scene statesmen.
There really have been few careers in modern music that have managed to pack in quite as much as Wayne Coyne and his crew. In that time, they’ve released 16 studio albums that range wildly in style, but here they all are, ranked from worst to best.
16. Hear It Is (1986)
Not only is Hear It Is The Flaming Lips' first full length album, it’s also their first release to feature Wayne Coyne on vocals following the departure of his brother Mark the previous year. It’s an interesting document of a band in their infancy, and the screaming, squealing opening noise-rock of With You or the slow burning dread of seven-minute album highlight Jesus Shooting Heroin probably sounded great upon release. But with the knowledge of where the band would go as their career progressed, this rather rudimentary Cramps-meets-Butthole Surfers punk rock can be filed under “interesting” rather than “essential”.
15. King’s Mouth (2019)
Initially released for Record Store Day, with a limited edition run of just 4000 copies pressed, King’s Mouth was conceived as the soundtrack to an art exhibition, with Mick Jones from The Clash providing narration throughout the album. It’s certainly worth a listen for completists. But, although many enjoyed the band stylistically harking back to the Yoshimi... era, this is some way off that album's quality in pure songwriting terms, and feels like something created with focus elsewhere.
14. Oh My Gawd!!!... (1987)
A year on from their debut, The Flaming Lips exhibited a great deal of growth as a band on their follow up. Oh My Gawd!!!... is by no means the finished article, but there are plenty of signs that this was a band who were not going to be content being another bog standards noise-rock band. There’s obvious influences taken from '70’s rock, and the maniacal nine-minute-plus journey of One Million Billionth of a Millisecond on a Sunday Morning was comfortably their finest song to date. That said, there are stodgy moments on here as well, so it's a mixed bag overall.
13. Zaireeka (1997)
Having basically done everything they felt they could do with the traditional sound of rock music, of course The Flaming Lips would decide to make an album of experimental dream-pop comprised of four separate releases that all need to be played simultaneously on four different sound systems. An interesting idea, not without its merits as a piece of music, but, especially back in 1997, a total nightmare to listen to as intended for anyone who didn't have access to their own recording studio. The desire to change should be encouraged, but this is the sound of a band chucking the baby out with the bathwater.
12. The Terror (2013)
Although there is plenty of melody on it, The Terror is aptly named. This is one of the harder Flaming Lips albums to fully appreciate and understand. Long, experimental jams, passages of throbbing, electronic buzz, Coyne’s vocals sounding disconnected and ghostly, a fifteen-minute-long drone song named You Lust, yep, The Terror sure is a daunting listen for those people who just remembered She Don’t Use Jelly. There’s pleasure to be had here if you really put the work in, but this is no place to start for newbies.
11. Telepathic Surgery (1989)
Initially intended as a one-track, 30-minute soundscape, Telepathic Surgery may not have come out as first intended, but not all of those ideas were binned off completely. It’s an odd album, with the gruff, industrialised riffing of Drug Machine In Heaven and Right Now kicking things off, before we get 29-seconds of aimless noise called Michael, Time to Wake Up and then Chrome Plated Suicide deliberately and shamelessly ripping off Guns ‘n’ Roses’ Sweet Child O' Mine. It never really gets any easier after that maddening opening. File under 'divisive'.
10. Embryonic (2009)
Three years after their biggest chart success, of course The Flaming Lips were going to make a sprawling, acid rock double album. Embryonic peaked at an astonishing number 8 on the US Billboard 200, which for a 70-minute-long trip that features the bug-eyed garage, psychedelia of Aquarius Sabotage, the freeform noise of Scorpio Sword and the ambient krautrock of The Ego’s Last Stand is wild. Despite the length, form and general weirdness of the album, it remains a coherent and fascinating listen.
9. Oczy Mlody (2017)
After finding the formula to conquer the mainstream and then promptly doing everything in their power to reject it, The Flaming Lips hit on something of a middle ground with their thirteenth album. Oczy Mlody continues the weird experimentation of their previous pair of records but re-introduces some of the pop nous that made their late '90s/early 2000s work so successful. So, we get the shimmering synth pop of There Should Be Unicorns alongside the weird seven-minute trip of Listening to Frogs with Demon Eyes. The best of both rather excellent worlds.
8. American Head (2020)
Easily the most straightforward album The Flaming Lips have made in decades, their most recent effort is a charmingly subtle and personal effort that leans heavily on classic Americana and soothing acoustic driven songs. At it's best, American Head is an incredible listen, with the wonderful Dinosaurs on the Mountain and the tearjerking piano ballad Mother Please Don’t Be Sad coming across as if Neil Young had been the fifth Beatle. Releasing material this strong 16 albums into a career is a hugely impressive feat.
7. Hit To Death In The Future Head (1992)
The band's major label debut is a lovely little bridge between their noisier indie years and the grandeur that they would come to embrace in the future. Hit Me Like You Did The First Time comes across like a nerdier US Jesus and Mary Chain, the woozy Halloween On The Barbary Coast sounds like R.E.M. after having their drinks spiked, whilst the brilliantly driving, straight-ahead rock of Frogs had all the potential to be a classic '90s chart bothering single. Not everyone was onboard, however: citing musical differences, guitarist Jonathan Donahue and drummer Nathan Roberts left soon after its release, the former to focus on Mercury Rev.
6. In A Priest Driven Ambulance (1990)
Four albums in, The Flaming Lips finally hit upon a sound that really worked for them. A concept album of sorts, based on Coyne’s intrigue at religion, In A Priest Driven Ambulance is where we say hello to the meld of jaunty, lo-fi melody and fuzzy, erratic indie rock that would become their calling card over the next few albums. When it’s good, ...Ambulance takes some beating; Unconsciously Screaming is oddly anthemic and the post-punk throb of Take Meta Mars and God Walks Among Us Now’s Sonic Youth-go-country both ooze cool. It earned them a major label record deal the following year, quite a coup for a band so odd.
5. Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots (2002)
Although maybe not quite up to the level of quality that came directly before it, Yoshimi... is The Flaming Lips' most commercially successful record. And if there was one album that you were going to be associated with by most people, this is a pretty great one.
A gorgeous, melancholic effort, with an even greater focus on electronic elements, the band’s tenth full-length set is like a cozy, warm, sonic duvet, with both parts of the title track creating lilting acoustic dreaminess and some breakbeat-filled, marshmallow funk. It won the band their first ever Grammy (Approaching Pavonis Mons by Balloon (Utopia Planitia) taking the Best Rock Instrumental Performance), was their first to enter the Billboard Top 50 and first to be certified Gold in the US. It’s also probably the one you already own... but they have made better records.
4. At War With The Mystics (2006)
Coming off the back of their best-selling album, The Flaming Lips were now a very big deal indeed. It’s something they obviously felt comfortable with, as much of At War With The Mystics is another gorgeous pop record that features some of the most conventional songs they had released at this point. An opening one-two of The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song, with its joyous, fizziness, and the geek-Stones shuffle of Free Radicals is some way to kick the album off. But, obviously, it’s far from straightforward all the time: the prog-flute funk out of The Wizard Turns On... is just one example of a band unafraid to keep their freak flag flying. The song also won them a well-deserved Grammy for Best Rock Instrumental Performance in 2007.
3. Transmissions from the Satellite Heart (1993)
AKA, the one with the really big hit on it. Even the most casual fan of The Flaming Lips will know the massive crossover hit She Don’t Use Jelly, unquestionably the most famous song of their early years. It’s a typically weird, but instantaneous, lo-fi indie banger, but it’s far from being the only moment of worth on Transmissions... Opener Turn it On is fantastic, the swerving garage riff of Superhumans is also great and When Yer Twenty-Two might be the best Janes Addiction song that Janes Addiction never got round to writing. An album that deserves to be remembered for far more than just one singular crossover tune.
2. Clouds Taste Metallic (1995)
There’s a reason that The Flaming Lips' seventh album was their final to truly fall under the umbrella of “alternative rock”; this is as perfect a document of the style as the band were ever going to manage, so why bother trying to top it? It’s understandable that there are some fans who dropped the band after Clouds..., The Flaming Lips never again came close to replicating the glorious, slacker noise of the likes of Lightning Strikes The Postman or Placebo Headwound. But listening back to the album, you fully understand why they felt the need to move on. Indie rock? Completed it mate.
1. The Soft Bulletin (1999)
Whatever it was that The Flaming Lips felt they had to get out of their system with Zaireeka, it was exorcised by the time they came to record its follow-up. And, respectfully, thank fuck for that, because if it hadn’t had been then we may not have got the finest album of their career.
Anyone who said they saw The Soft Bulletin coming at the time would be a liar. Indeed, given the lukewarm reaction to their previous album, drummer Steven Drozd nearly losing his arm to a spider bite, and bassist Michael Ivins being involved in a serious car crash (as spelled out on the song The Spiderbite Song), it actually looked unlikely that The Flaming Lips would be a band for much longer. Instead, they rallied and created a soaring, gorgeous, symphonic, alt-pop masterpiece that turned them into superstars and was well deserving of the “90’s Pet Sounds” moniker it so often received. Race for the Prize, Buggin’, Waiting For A Superman..., we could go on, but this entire record is The Flaming Lips operating at the peak of their powers.
