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PROLOGUE
To begin, imagine you could take the CD front cover at the top right of this page and turn it around to observe the corresponding back cover. At this point, you could see, in an orange frame, a beautiful (so to speak) photo of an American town (I imagine Oklahoma City), with a sky above, and in the sky 13/14 rows of clouds (yes, I really said rows) converging at the horizon. If you still had patience and curiosity, and you observed the upper part of the cover, in the frame of the photo, you would read in red on orange: "these CLOUDS Are REAL!!!"
WONDER is the first (forgotten) wonder of the world. People do not know what to do with it. The other day, I found a pile of it under my house thrown next to a garbage bin (it seemed abandoned by a former child just grown up).
Oklahoma City is full of garbage bins...
THE ALBUM
It is said, in radical-music circles, that this album represents the beginning of the new course of the Flaming Lips, the one of constant and continuous collaboration between our guys and Dave Fridmann. Constant and continuous collaboration that since then (we are in 1995) has brought definitely chilly sounds and distortion, gentle voices and unpleasant noises, like moon and sun, into the music of the group from Oklahoma City. This album represents the end of the punk Flaming Lips and the beginning of their pop period. The end of the Flaming Lips, period, for many. Not for me.
For me, this small-great album, has above all recovered, from a forgotten garbage bin in Oklahoma City, left there, abandoned like Jago-Totò and Otello-Ninetto Davoli in Pasolini's "What Are Clouds":
The sound:
of the last (published) arabesques of Jones' guitar, about which Coyne said in an interview (after the guitarist left the FL): "I'm sorry Ronald decided to leave the group and compose and play for himself the most beautiful music that no one will ever hear"
of the apotheosis of Christmas bells and more in the tail of The Abandoned Hospital Ship, the final theme of a short black-and-white fairy tale narrated by Wayne Coyne to the sound of a subdued and "disturbed" piano, a melancholic waltz, and an old projector
The words:
of When You Smile: "every single molecule is in its place, when you smile; all the subatomic particles gather to then open up all at once in a single instant, when you smile"
of Christmas At The Zoo: "It started snowing in the middle of a Christmas night walking through the state zoo park, and everything was white..."
of all those things that will never come true in our world, or maybe, thinking about it, only destined to come true with a "supernatural delay"
of the nostalgia of that parallel world in which all those things are being realized
In short, for me, this album has recovered from that dumpster the wonder of music and words deranged in their subtle melancholy, and still the non-sense madness (but not that much) of track titles like Psychiatric Exploration Of The Fetus With Needles and Lightning Strikes the Postman, and the smell of burning from the postman's uniform when he delivered it to me live from England, on a day of storms and lightning a few years ago...
Tracklist Lyrics and Samples
03 Placebo Headwound (03:40)
Where does outer space end
it's sort of hard to imagine
is it real? Is it nothin, nothin?
Cause it's not so clear anymore to me...,
Why do birds always fly south
when sometimes its warm in yer headwound
is that nothin? Nothin?
Cause its not so clear anymore to me...
And if God hears all my questions
well how come there's never an answer?
Is it nothin, nothin?
04 This Here Giraffe (03:46)
I saw this bird fly off his head
without him ever lookin up
this here giraffe was never caught complainin
he wouldn't take skin off yer back.
And ya hear yerself
thinkin
and ya hear yerself
thinking
this here giraffe, laughed
I saw this man stick out his neck
with his binoculars intact
He couldn't tell the right side of his brain
Had just lost all interest in his left...
And ya feel yourself shrinkin
And ya feel yourself shrinkin
this here giraffe, laughed
this here giraffe, laughed
And ya hear yourself
And ya hear yourself
07 When You Smile (03:13)
It's like I never had to see it in your eyes or feel it
I could tell when you smile.
It's like I didn't need to say anything or do much, I could tell
when you smile
All of the subatomic pieces come together and
unfold themselves in a second...
every single molecule is right, when
all of the subatomic pieces come together and unfold
themselves in a second.
09 They Punctured My Yolk (04:21)
They never called me up to the tower, we gave it to them, they had the power,
and power is the thing that made you take off from me... We trained hard for
the mission, all floating over, though we're in zero gravity, it pulled us
closer. We were once off to the planets, inside our space suits.
Now I'm left here on the landing, the rockets flame boost, and it's leaving
without me, and you go off to the sky. Good-bye. Good-bye. Look as the
clouds burst, they're growing taller, as your ship leaves in the distance
my world gets smaller, and it takes you worlds away, a million light years from
me... Oh, Oh, Oh
10 Lightning Strikes the Postman (02:50)
I got your letter it had.. turned to sand,
lighting strikes the postman in his hand.
I hope that you remember the things you had to say..
It's just a supernatural delay.
I got your package it was.. all a mess,
lightning strikes the postman in his chest.
I hope that you remember the things you had to say.
It's just a supernatural delay.
I sent you a postcard and I.. hope you're fine
But lightning strikes the postman all the time
I couldn't really think of anything to say.
It's just a supernatural delay,
And it's hard to read the writing through the flames...
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