The Flaming Lips - Soft Bulletin
NME.COM feature on The Flaming Lips - Soft Bulletin album including album review, artwork, tracks, listen now, tour dates, discography and more.
Album Review
The Soft Bulletin
In 15 years [B]The Flaming Lips[/B] have been broken apart and put back together again more times than a children's jigsaw.
In 15 years The Flaming Lips have been broken apart and put back together again more times than a children's jigsaw. The only constant in that time has been Wayne Coyne - and it's his boundless imagination and remorseless pursuit of new sound that has brought them to this, their latest lofty pinnacle. If the Lips spent much of their early career doing a rough approximation...
- Apr 6, 1999
More The Flaming Lips Reviews
The Flaming Lips - 'The Terror'
It’s not a good trip, exactly, but the Lips’ experiments in loveless desolation are as uplifting as they are terrifying
- Apr 2, 2013
The Flaming Lips Tickets
| Date / Time | Artist | Venue | Town/City | Seetickets | Viagogo |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 21, 2013 00:00 | The Flaming Lips | Roundhouse | London |
Buy The Flaming Lips
Tickets |
|
| May 21, 2013 00:00 | The Flaming Lips | The Roundhouse Studio | London |
Buy The Flaming Lips
Tickets |
The Flaming Lips - Soft Bulletin Videos
More The Flaming Lips - Soft Bulletin Videos
The Flaming Lips - Soft Bulletin YouTube Videos
More The Flaming Lips - Soft Bulletin YouTube Videos
The Flaming Lips News
Flaming Lips on The Stone Roses: 'It's virtually the same song over and over again'
US band are recording their own version of the Manchester act;s iconic debut
The Flaming Lips working on 'Lip$ha' album with Ke$ha
Band previously worked with US pop star on their album 'The Flaming Lips And Heavy Fwends'
The Flaming Lips stream live version of new album – listen
The band's SXSW performance of 'The Terror' is put online
The Flaming Lips - Soft Bulletin: Wikipedia Album Entry
So where does a band go after releasing the most defiantly experimental record of its career? If you're the Flaming Lips, you keep rushing headlong into the unknown -- The Soft Bulletin, their follow-up to the four-disc gambit Zaireeka, is in many ways their most daring work yet, a plaintively emotional, lushly symphonic pop masterpiece eons removed from the mind-warping noise of their past efforts. Though more conventional in concept and scope than Zaireeka, The Soft Bulletin clearly reflects its predecessor's expansive sonic palette. Its multidimensional sound is positively celestial, a shape-shifting pastiche of blissful melodies, heavenly harmonies, and orchestral flourishes; but for all its headphone-friendly innovations, the music is still amazingly accessible, never sacrificing popcraft in the name of radical experimentation. (Its aims are so perversely commercial, in fact, that hit R&B remixer Peter Mokran tinkered with the cuts "Race for the Prize" and "Waitin' for a Superman" in the hopes of earning mainstream radio attention.) But what's most remarkable about The Soft Bulletin is its humanity -- these are Wayne Coyne's most personal and deeply felt songs, as well as the warmest and most giving. No longer hiding behind surreal vignettes about Jesus, zoo animals, and outer space, Coyne pours his heart and soul into each one of these tracks, poignantly exploring love, loss, and the fate of all mankind; highlights like "The Spiderbite Song" and "Feeling Yourself Disintegrate" are so nakedly emotional and transcendentally spiritual that it's impossible not to be moved by their beauty. There's no telling where the Lips will go from here, but it's almost beside the point -- not just the best album of 1999, The Soft Bulletin might be the best record of the entire decade.
Tracks
User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License and may also be available under the GNU FDL.
Like The Flaming Lips? You might also like...
Artist/Album artwork images hosted by Last.fm. For copyright enquiries please see here.
