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Rating: The Flaming Lips of the '80s were a band that, with the utmost ease, perhaps due to their perpetual lysergic state, managed to collide absolutely contrasting sounds, thus creating a fragile musical collage, perpetually on the brink of collapsing on itself. Just like fragile is the psyche under the effect of acid.
Oh My Gawd! is one of the few psychedelic pearls of its decade, as can be inferred from the cover.
The album is like an imaginary amusement park, where Coyne & co. enjoy giving out lollipops with an acidic aftertaste to all the children who enter. In the amusement park, one moves on a giant roller coaster, which soars to dizzying heights, only to descend abruptly, leaving us almost breathless.
This is the flow of the record, which alternates fragile guitar ballads traversed by psychedelic veins (Can't Exist, Thanks To You), where it seems like watching Syd Barrett strolling with his lollipop, to darker and more anguished moments (the acidic The Ceiling is Bending and Maximum Dream for Evil Knievel) where Wayne Coyne takes us to his haunted house to scare us a bit. And there are many scares taken while listening to the long One Million Billionth of a Millisecond on a Sunday Morning, with its alternating quiet piano and guitar phrases to fierce sonic assaults.
In the more cheerful moments, the pace is almost clownish and we find rockabilly rhythms contrasted with Pink Floydian instrumental intros (Prescription: Love) or punkish songs (Can't Stop the Spring) where the elephants from Fantasia make an appearance.
Unfortunately, since the beginning of the new decade, the Lips will migrate towards more reassuring pop territories, losing that peculiar (and unsettling) ability to blend the bubblegum imagery of American pop culture and the acid culture of the '60s. But just looking at the sneering face of the Wayne Coyne of today, it's clear our ride at the amusement park has ended, while he doesn't seem quite eager to leave.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
04 Can't Exist (02:48)
What I can't see, I surely can't believe
What I can't see, you know I can't believe
It's only natural that I can't believe
What I can't see
I've seen the birds fly,
Watched the crashing tide
Talked a million miles away
Run through open fields
Heard the words of those who kneel
Still I wondered how to steal your love
But I never could believe in me
What've I gotta do to make you see me?
Should I lay down and cry
Maybe I should just die
'cause I really can't exist if you don't see me
08 Thanks to You (03:56)
I want to thank you
You've been the meaning of life for me
Now I can see the real me
Feelings I couldn't bear
All the things I wouldn't dare
Times I thought no one cared
Then I looked at you
You were there
Sometimes I think this has all been a dream
But I wake up to find that it's not what it seems in my mind
It's all mine
Feelings I couldn't bear
All the things I wouldn't dare
Times I thought no one cared
Then I looked at you
You were there
People don't know what the songs are about
They just sing them out like they mean
Something we never thought about
11 Love Yer Brain (07:44)
Sometimes I don't know what to think about the world
When this guy is burnin' up in the street with gasoline
And the flames show no mercy
So when you really need someone to talk to you
It doesn't always work like it's supposed to
You can love yer brain
Even if it slips down the drain
Man, I'm not no drug addict
But a person's gotta have something
To keep him from going insane
Well, this man kills this other man
Who's killed this other man, so it's okay
And this fourteen year old's sittin' in the electric chair
Smilin' and smokin' a cigarette
So I guess I was right all along readin' Mad magazine
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