Daily Jam - Love Yer Brain

I understand that Steven Drozd recently left The Flaming Lips.  With Michael Ivins having departed a couple years back, that leaves Wayne Coyne as the sole remaining original member.  I get the feeling that he may not be the most fun person to work with.  Anyway, here's a track from the band from happier times.  Listen to "Love Yer Brain" below, our Daily Jam.

Daily Jam - Borderline

Here's The Flaming Lips, with a little help from fellow Oklahomans Stardeath and White Dwarfs, covering Madonna.  Listen to "Borderline" below, our Daily Jam.

Daily Jam - Marching the Hate Machines (Into the Sun)

Seeing albums from the mid-'00s hit their 20th anniversaries is absolutely mind blowing to me.  Time moves too fast.  Anyway, marking it's 21st anniversary this year is Thievery Corporation's "The Cosmic Game."  Here's the album opener featuring The Flaming Lips.  Listen to "Marching the Hate Machines (Into the Sun)" below, our Daily Jam.

Daily Jam - The Spark that Bled

The Flaming Lips' 1999 album "The Soft Bulletin" has always moved me, it's loose story of scientists trying to save the world but ultimately failing as a metaphor for losing a loved one to illness striking a particular nerve in my heart soul, even before my father died from cancer.  Despite the heavy content, there are plenty of moments of levity and quirkiness, this being a Flaming Lips record after all, that by contrast make the sadder moments all the more devastating.  To me at least.  One of those is shift in tone towards the end of "The Spark that Bled" with Wayne Coyne lamenting that "in reality there was no reaction."  That line kills me.  Every time.  Going on a quarter of a century now.  Check it out for yourself below, our Daily Jam.

Daily Jam - Christmas at the Zoo

So very, very tired.  Up until 2am wrapping presents.  Up at 6:30am because of excited, giddy children.  Making Christmas dinner.  Cleaning up after Christmas dinner.  I'm about to pass out.  Anyway, here's The Flaming Lips and "Christmas at the Zoo," our Daily Jam.  Merry Christmas!

Daily Jam - In the Morning of the Magicians

Here's a little spacey and melancholy Flaming Lips for your Thursday.  Listen to "In the Morning of the Magicians" below, our Daily Jam.

Daily Jam - Watching the Planets

There are bands who will release an album that instantly and then forever falls onto my continuous playlist, and then there are bands like The Flaming Lips who have done it multiple times through multiple decades.  Here's a track from the one the released in 2009.  Check out the Karen O assisted "Watching the Planets" below, our Daily Jam.

Clouds Taste Satanic

Doomy, stoner instrumental metal band Clouds Taste Satanic wrap up their "Satanic Singles Series" with volume 4 featuring covers of Cheap Trick's "Auf Wiedersehen," and The Flaming Lips' "Sleeping on the Roof."  See as the Lips provided us with our Daily Jam today, we'll keep in that direction.  Check out the cover below and conjure images of guitarists playing on the roof at night under the moon.  Then go grab the 7" here.

Daily Jam - What Is the Light?

There are a few albums out there that i have a deep, emotional connection to, and one of those is "The Soft Bulletin" by The Flaming Lips.  I also haven't listened to it in a very long time.  I think i can remedy that.  Here's "What Is the Light," our Daily Jam.

The Flaming Lips

Fresh off of being on our Daily Jam yesterday, The Flaming Lips have a new record heading our way in September.  "American Head" features the collaboration the band did earlier this year with Kacey Musgraves and this new track, "My Religion Is You."  Watch the video below and pre-order the record here.

Daily Jam - 35,000 Feet of Despair

With a new album on the way, i thought i'd go back and revisit one of the weirder experiments of The Flaming Lips, the 1997 album "Zaireeka" that you needed four stereos to listen to properly.  It's not always easy to put four stereos together to listen to an album, so i'm glad that there are some proper mixes of the songs available out there for our purposes here.  Here's a song about an airplane pilot who hangs himself in the cockpit mid flight, "35,000 Feet of Despair," our Daily Jam.

The Flaming Lips and Kacey Musgraves

I'm a longtime fan of The Flaming Lips, and it this point i'm in for the long haul, but the output of the last few years has not been my favorite.  I can dig on the experimentation, but it's been almost a decade since i really liked a Lips record ("Heady Fwends"), and even longer since i've loved one ("Embryonic").  All that being said, the band's new single, "Flowers of Neptune 6," featuring Kacey Musgraves on backing vocals is just lovely.  It harkens back to the turn of the century sounds of "Soft Bulletin," but without feeling like a complete retread.  And the video has Wayne back in the bubble, which i suppose is a good place to be these days.  Check it out below.

Daily Jam (Covers Week) - The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face

A few years back, The Flaming Lips made a bunch of collaborative EPs with a whole slew of different artists like Neon Indian, Lightning Bolt, and Yoko Ono, cuts of which eventually ended up on a full length album called "Heady Fwends."  One of the collabs i was most intrigued by was with the soul and R&B singer Erykah Badu.  That collaboration unfortunately saw a lot of drama between the two artists, but i dig on their epic rendition of Ewan MacColl's and Peggy Seeger's "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face."  Check it out below, our Daily Jam.

Deap Lips

So The Flaming Lips and LA duo Deap Vally are collaborating on an album together called for a project donned Deap Lips.  And checking out new single "Home Thru Hell," i'm down with it.  Listen to the track below and pre-order the self-titled album here from Cooking Vinyl.

Daily Jam - Guy Who Got a Headache and Accidentally Saves the World

Quite possibly my favorite title for a song ever and taken from the end of my favorite era of one of my favorite bands, "Guy Who Got a Headache and Accidentally Saves the World" is such a quintessentially sounding Flaming Lips tune, that it's one i would definitely go to if attempting to explain what the band's sound is to me.  Noisy, off-kilter, and a little silly, it's how i'm going to start this week out.  Listen below, our Daily Jam.

Daily Jam - Chewin' the Apple of Your Eye

The Flaming Lips' 1993 album "Transmissions from The Satellite Heart" is one of those records that not only made me want to start writing my own songs, but made me feel like it was something i could actually do.  So here's one of my faves, "Chewin' the Apple of Your Eye," our Daily Jam.

Daily Jam - Waiting for Superman

Grief is like this hole that you dig for yourself, shovel at the ready, preparing for loss and the metaphorical inability to move thereafter.  So you dig and you dig and you walk around the yard, keeping the hole ever in your periphery even as you ignore it or focus on other things.  And then you experience a loss of some kind, and you climb into your hole and pull the dirt in around yourself, immobile and trapped, submerged within your grief.  It's just you and the hole.  And then maybe gradually, you push some of the dirt away and you free parts of your body.  And you begin to move your legs again and push more and more of the dirt away until you can slowly start to pull yourself out of the hole.  And then you stand.  But you have to be mindful, because it's really easy to slip and fall right back in that hole again.  So you walk away from it and move around the yard again, still keeping the hole in your periphery.  Then maybe a memory strikes you, or you hear a song, or you see a movie, or smell an old and familiar fragrance, so you go back to the hole for a little while.  Maybe you get all the way in, or maybe you just stand by it for awhile.  This happens over and over again.  Sometimes it hurts a lot, sometimes maybe just a little bit.  But it's there.  It's always there.  You and the hole.

I didn't (maybe couldn't) listen to The Flaming Lips' "Waiting for Superman" for a long time, the allegory just being too much to couple with my own loss.  But the song's poignant grasp on the realities of coping with your grief and your pain is just too powerful to try and ignore forever.  Taking this childhood ideal, this unconquerable force of good and empathy, and noting that he can't save you this time feels like the world exploding, but it's real and it's true.  You just have to wait for time to eventually do its thing.

And maybe someday you can fill in that hole and not linger around it so much anymore.

Robert Harcourt Williams, 10/13/44 - 4/11/09

Sonic Advent Calendar: Day 17 - Silent Night / Lord, Can You Hear Me

Today, let's listen to The Flaming Lips melancholy version of Christmas staple, "Silent Night."  This version is particularly wonderful as the band kind of turns it into a medley, using Spiritualized's "Lord, Can You Hear Me" to play the song out.  Listen below.

Sonic Advent Calendar: Day 6 - Once Beyond Hopelessness

Okay, so i'm cheating a little bit with this one, the Flaming Lips' "Once Beyond Hopelessness" being more droning, experimental film score than Christmas song.  But it's from a movie they made called "Christmas on Mars," and the band has always seemed to gravitate towards the joy and sadness of the season, so i think it works.  Listen below.

Sonic Advent Calendar: Day 10 - Christmas at the Zoo

There's just something innately joyous about the The Flaming Lips.  Even when they're at their most challenging or dour, the light always seems to shine through.  And that's why Christmas is such a match for them, whether they're covering old holiday songs, making experimental Christmas movies, or just making their own strange odes to the season, it all works wonderfully.  Listen to "Christmas at the Zoo" from 1995's "Clouds Taste Metallic" below...and smile.