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Rating:
Given that on this site there are either posers or assholes, it's useless to dwell on this album... In my opinion no, and I feel a bit like the RAI of forty years ago, but it's not a problem considering the loads of reviews regarding genuinely useless albums that make up this site.
"Hear It Is", the first album by Flaming Lips, sounds like if Black Flag were covering Syd Barrett's songs at double speed.
No doubt about it: a better debut is impossible.
In fact, just think that it all starts with "With You", which for the first thirty seconds sounds like a cheesy love ballad... and then, damn, an abominable noise breaks onto the scene after a well-orchestrated crescendo. Things one couldn't even imagine and it's like finding your ass on the ground, after forty or fifty seconds of the album, like after a feint by Baggio during his Fiorentina period. "Unplugged" it definitely isn't. It starts with distorted guitar and vocals akin to the best Detroit garage made of emotional stop-and-go. By the time you reach the third song, "Trains, Brains & Rains", you realize it's not just psychedelic punk but also emotional indie, pleasant and not always overwhelming. "Jesus Shootin’ Heroin" lasts over seven minutes and never gets boring, never, never... NEVER.
Beautiful, you could write a full review just about this song, but what a waste of words, and this is only one side of the Flaming Lips.
"Just Like Before" is the Lips' manifesto. Namely: take a chord progression, or a riff, heading towards normality... Done?? Good!!! Now add some quirks you never thought possible. Mix... Done?? Good. These are the Flaming Lips: melodic paradox. Next is "She Is Death", which is a psychotic and psychedelic ballad.
"Charlie Manson Blues" is, as mentioned, an irreverent blues with their characteristic la la la la la la and hu ha hu ha hu ha hu ha that makes you ask: are these three clowns pretending or are they for real?
The next one, "Man From Pakistan", is cute with its chorus-laden bass (ah, the bassist, Irvins, is one of the nicest, I think, assholes in rock) but it gets literally swept away by "Godzilla Flick". One of my all-time favorite songs! A ballad with a crescendo (a strength throughout their career), out of tune and off-key, complete with an indolent lyric, choruses, and a WEIRD text, and after four minutes of the same repeating chord progression, it ends with a... BOOM (a gunshot). As if to say: YOU’VE HAD ENOUGH!
"Starting Sound" is the song where you can hear the influence of a certain psychedelia the most, in my opinion.
Anyway, I think you've got it. The Flaming Lips are a group of party animals who enjoy doing things in the strangest way possible. They unite in the only possible way psychedelia and punk without ever being trivial.
Of course, psychedelia is not something imposed, it's psychedelia, after all. If premeditated, what the hell kind of psychedelia is it? Right? Moreover, psychedelia is made of only minor chords or of simple songs in attitude, think of Barrett, without thinking about the cosmos, elves, and meadows. Right?
So, I ask myself, after having split my head for months over this record where the drums are free, the ideas flow bumping, overlapping, infecting each other, urged by a voice trying to be melodic, how the Verdena themselves consider, they themselves eh!!!, that the psychedelic component is the most present in their latest beastly discography? Ah, do you think the late Pink Floyd works, like The Wall or Final Cut, are truly psychedelic?
I would say let's question the term psychedelia!!! What is it really? How does one define a truly psychedelic record?
This certainly is. The reasons are many and they are the same for why this is also a terribly punk album.
A MATTER OF ATTITUDE!!!
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
02 Unplugged (02:14)
In this bogus town we ain't got nothing to do.
Everybody's pretty cool, hate to stoop.
Thinking they're great, some new kind of drug.
They got their wires pulled out, tell ya man they're unplugged.
They're unplugged.
Everybody here is a mental case.
Their eyes are staring out into space.
Try to talk to them and I really get burned.
Nobody's home, I tell ya man they're unplugged.
They're unplugged.
There's too many dumb-fucks.
Man, it really sucks.
Spending all their bucks.
They're all unplugged, in their heads. Come on.
In their heads.
Sick!
09 Godzilla Flick (04:05)
This isn't no Godzilla flick,
This isn't no Godzilla flick.
People that you love,
are never going to say 'hello' again.
And it's only in the movies.
This isn't no Godzilla flick.
This isn't no Clint Eastwood flick.
People that you love,
Shouldn't take the life out of themselves.
And it's only in the movies.
This isn't no Godzilla flick.
This isn't no Godzilla flick.
This isn't no Godzilla flick.
And no this time I think it's really it.
And it's only in the movies.
10 Staring at Sound / With You (reprise) (05:08)
I just don't want them to say,
"Oh, it's a beautiful day."
Let's just not talk about the gloom.
Let's all go die in my living-room.
I want to be a movie-star,
And play the part of a man from outer-space.
When we meet, I'll fall in love with you.
And we have sex, but I don't know what to do (what to do).
I want to hear some band play,
A song that sounds just like you look.
And when they play, I'll follow them around,
Cause all I'd do is stare at the sound.
I'd just stare at the sound.
I'd just stare at the sound.
I'd just go.
Come on.
Hey.
What?
All that I know
is my mind is blown.
When I'm with you.
When I'm with you. x5
When I'm...
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