headlessparrot's Full Review: A Collection of Songs Representing an Enthusiasm F...
It’s always been one of those highly revered truths when it comes to writing, that at some points an appropriate quotation is the only way to go, because, in the words of the young character from American History X, someone has already said it better than you can. It’s in that spirit that I tell you, “Never trust anybody who says they like the Flaming Lips’ “old stuff” better.” These words, as apt as anything I could ever come up on my own, were originally penned by one Mark Richard-San over at Pitchfork Media. And while sometimes I have trouble understanding exactly where they’re coming from over there, they do usually at least do a good job of explaining exactly why they believe what they believe - besides, this is one of those times when the writer hits it dead on the mark. To put it as succinctly as possible, the Flaming Lips were one of those bands who, while possessing all the creative genius and “talent” (albeit talent in the non-traditional sense of the word), didn’t exactly do too well for themselves in the first several years of their existence while they were still searching for one true identity as a band. Their pre-1990 output was often marginal at best, and none of it really holds a candle to what Wayne Coyne and his two musical partners achieved in the 90s or even into this decade. If someone tells you they prefer the Lips old stuff better, you can be sure that they’re either making a desperate ploy for some sort of indie credibility by going against popular wisdom, or they’re simply interested in weird for the sake of weird. And as often as I use the term weird to describe the catalogue of the Flaming Lips on a while, their last three albums simply don’t hold a candle in terms of unorthodoxy to the minor label work that preceded it.
If you’re familiar with my music reviews, you’ve obviously seen me absolutely salivate over a significant portion of the Flaming Lips musical catalogue. And for good reason. Although still only a recent discovery for myself, the Lips have time and time again shown themselves to be one of the most inventive, creative, and sonically textured bands to reach mainstream audiences in several years. And that’s not really a critique of mainstream music so much as it is a compliment to the artistry of the Lips themselves. Many bands today are making great music. Not only are the Flaming Lips making great music today, they’ve been making great music for nearly twenty years now - the only difference between now and 1984 for the Lips being their consistency. That’s not to say they haven’t changed, because that would be a silly suggestion. Simply listening to their albums chronologically reveals a fascinating growth and a marked change in direction, but at the core of their music has always been the notion of crafting experimental music just for the sake of crafting it, and doing it in such a way that it is primarily concerned with pleasing the band only. If others happen to like it - and obviously many have - then that’s an added bonus, but at the heart of Wayne Coyne’s musical aspirations is his own desire to create something unique and strangely beautiful. What exactly he considers to be unique and strangely beautiful has radically shifted over time - as evidenced by Exhibit A, The Flaming Lips’ lengthily titled A Collection of Songs Representing An Enthusiasm For Recording…By Amateurs…Or The Accidental Career: 1984-1990, which is (for anyone other than the single most dedicated of Flaming Lips fans) essentially all you really need to own when it comes to the Lips’ pre-Warner Brothers label days. Because as much as I’d like to consider myself a fan of the Flaming Lips, and as good as some of their early stuff was, they just weren’t a consistent enough band at the time to warrant more than a compilation. Now is a much different story, but A Collection Of Songs Representing An Enthusiasm For Recording is the best possible glimpse you can get of the early Flaming Lips without having to wade through what is essentially some very sub par material - innovative and unique sub par material, but sub par material nonetheless. And I’m also fully aware that by saying this, I’ve implicated myself into an intricate web of hatred from Flaming Lips fans the world over, but it’s something that I genuinely believe.
It’s almost difficult to believe that yes, the Flaming Lips have in fact been around for twenty or so years now, if only because they’ve been able to stay so fresh for that entire time (part of which can at least be chalked up to the fact that they were never really big and therefore never really suffered from ad nauseum repeat). They’ve always stayed contemporary (or some might even say ahead of our time) in their musical ideas, and have completely avoided the stigma of many bands who gradually morph into nothing more than anonymous, inoffensive and irrelevant tribute bands of their former selves. It’s a testament to their talent and experimental nature, but also to their willingness to try new techniques and keep a fresh sound - in the process avoiding the stale repetition and retread that has long ago become the staple of many of today’s big bands. The original product of the Coyne brothers - Wayne and the decidedly less well-known Mark, the Flaming Lips were, like many bands start out, simply a channel through which the band was able to vent their everyday frustrations. There were never any noble intentions or a need for some artistic outlet - merely a group of loosely knit Oklahomans in need of a break from the day jobs that they were already prepared to work at for the rest of their lives. Like many bands, too, the Flaming Lips - initially Mark and Wayne Coyne, Michael Ivins and Richard English - were not a band particularly well versed in musical prowess. Unlike other bands, though, who would have likely gone straight to three chord punk, the Lips decided to use their rudimentary skills to their own advantage and make music that was simply weird for the sake of weird (or, more appropriately, weird for the sake of simplicity).
It’s almost hard to believe today that the Flaming Lips were born from such a notion. The sheer grandiosity of the arrangements and simply beautiful musical performances found on the Soft Bulletin and Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots hardly seems consistent with a band that didn’t even know how to hold their instruments. But considering all of the changes that the band has undergone and the sheer amount of time that has past, it’s hardly surprising that the Lips have adapted and put their desire to be peculiar into an actual technical and musical know how - because it’s really the only way that they could have really even progressed as a band and stayed even marginally relevant. But another aspect of that transformation can be chalked up, at least in part, to what they learned behind the scenes, in production and engineering. Both the musical and the technical aspect of the Lips growth are addressed on A Collection of Songs Representing An Enthusiasm For Recording, but as a whole, the album is really more concerned with looking at the band’s growth from a production standpoint than an actual musical standpoint. At least that’s what Lips leader Wayne Coyne’s liner notes lead one to believe, as he details the ideas that he and the band had in mind with each progressive record - not so much with regards to performance and execution as it is with how the music can be recorded and shaped to help the band achieve their “weird” sound and fit in with some local indie subgenre. In the end, the moral really seems to be that you’d be amazed at what an artist can create in a studio when, in Coyne’s own words “they think they know what they’re doing.”
A Collection Of Songs was originally intended to serve as a greatest hits of the Flaming Lips early years, but in the end has a sort of duality about it - equal parts greatest hits and obscure tracks that even diehards haven’t heard before. All in all, though, it still works out tremendously well. Just as important as the music, however, are the remarkable liner notes penned by Lips bandleader Wayne Coyne; it’s just as essential as the music itself is, like a booklet that come with activity cassettes. It adds - sometimes much needed - perspective to the sixty-plus minutes of music here, and answers many of the nagging questions about the band and their approach in general. Not only that, but it’s also hilarious, in the typical subversive Flaming Lips style that one has come to expect from the trio. Detached and ironic, with more than a touch of self-deprecating humour, Wayne Coyne’s prose is as fun to read as his music is to listen to.
The seeming question at the root of The Accidental Career is (to quote Wayne’s liner notes again) to answer the question “why?” - “why would a band make music like this?” The answer, as evident from listening to the album as actually reading it on the page is one of because - because they could, and no one stopped them. Upon releasing their debut EP to what they perceived to be a terribly confusing amount of praise, they quickly adopted the DIY punk ethic, playing shows with hardcore bands whilst never actually fitting in. It’s fascinating to read about the band’s progression, as Coyne lists off seemingly dozens of genres that they dabbled in - from death rock psychedelia to psychotic noise rock and on. It’s especially entertaining given the specificity and strangeness of these titles, but in some ways, it does aptly reflect many of the band’s stages, where identifiable differences do crop up in the listening process. Musical progression for the Lips was slow, but it was constantly shaping and changing their approach to music, moving from what Coyne terms “accidental musicalness” to a form of curiosity-driven experimentation. And all the while with a sly smirk on their face at the inanity of what they were doing.
Much of The Accidental Career (which is, actually, a very apt subtitle) is driven by a simple desire to be weird; the result of middle-of-the-road musicians trying to be, in some way or shape, as memorable as possible. This goal alone is reflected in the song titles - aside from Coyne’s oddly creepy fixation on Jesus and Judeo-Christian morality/ethics/creation myths, there is a Chrome Plated Suicide and one Hell’s Angel Cracker Factory. It’s all very surreal, but to be honest, little has changed in this particular category. However, the music itself is vastly different - almost an antithesis of what the Lips represent as musicians today. There are no carefully arranged synthesizers, no cello or orchestral presence; no backing vocals, and no carefully layering of textures. Instead, it’s a literal mishmash of noise that assaults you. It grabs you and shakes you as if to say, “Look! This is noise! But it’s music!” In a strange way, though, it is a mishmash of noise that is very much musical. The cacophony of overdriven, feedbacking out-of-tune guitars and basses dominate the landscape, with crashing cymbals barely audible, shrieks of the synthesizer and seemingly randomly spliced sound effects, all topped by Wayne Coyne’s Neil Young-style raspy vocals. In recent years, Coyne has embraced the art of lyricism and begun to deal with the inescapable issues of life - love, loss, death. His early years, in sharp contrast, are littered with mysterious drug references, troubling imagery and -quite often --strange words strung together to contribute atmosphere. The result of these brash, uneducated attempts at music making are now forever a part of music history. Luckily, through it all, the Flaming Lips just seem to have an innate ability to, to put it as simply as possible - sound good.
Opening with a washed-out, trebly and fuzzy bass lick, Bag Full Of Thoughts kicks off the album with a definite grunge vibe. The bass fades and is replaced by a catchy, heavily fuzzed guitar progression and a simple, lifeless snare drum. Coyne’s vocals drone on evenly, heavily distorted and echoed, adding texture and a certain atmosphere to the song. Occasional bursts of shrieking feedback and heavy tremolo use accentuate the song as it moves on; certainly catchy but - in a sense - certainly exhausting. This is immediately followed by Jesus Shootin’ Heroin, evidence of Wayne’s messiac fascination. Much like the title would suggest, it’s a sprawling and elaborate number that represents one of the band’s single brightest spots before being signed to the major labels. Moody, textured and troubling, it’s also unintentionally funny - an attempt at a sprawling rock epic with that Lips twist; lyrically confront religious fanaticism, drug abuse and even prostitution. Beginning slowly, with a gradually building chord progression, through seven minutes, the band work themselves to a furious, chaotic climax before coming back down again from the high.
One Million Billionth Of A Millisecond On A Sunday Morning is even lengthier at nine minutes, picking up exactly where the previous track left off, following a similar patter of building to climax before unleashing into a furious - yet oddly melodic - mess. Chrome Plated Suicide is one of the more conventional numbers, borrowing its chords from Guns N’ Roses’ Sweet Child Of Mine and shaping them further, layering drums and shrill feedback. The song itself is still abrasive, but the guarded optimism shines through in Coyne’s straining vocals ("If you take away my nerves/And leave just my words/Love would be the best thing in the world").
Michael Time To Wake Up is thirty seconds of random noise that Wayne used to wake bassist Michael Ivins up (whose head was about six inches away from the amplifier speakers - “it seemed funny at the time”), while Hell’s Angel Cracker Factory is arguably the album’s worst cut: a nearly unlistenable three minutes of engines revving, spacey synths and trebly guitar work (although it’s coarse energy is admirable).
Next up are Unconsciously Screaming and God Walks Among Us Now - Jesus Song No. 6, both following in a similar vein as what preceded it. Thing start to get a little strange around Strychnine/Peace, Love and Understanding, which finds the band fusing two totally unrelated covers together in an oddly beautiful mess, with the Elvis Costello bit played at breakneck, throbbing speed - and bearing almost no resemblance to the original. Two more covers follow suite, unrehearsed and poorly played to a live audience in the hopes that they would recognize them. Sonic Youth’s Death Valley 㣩 elicits almost no response, but as the opening chords of Led Zeppelin’s Thank You wash over the crowd, a few muffled cheers rise up from the sloshed audience. Always one of my favourite Zeppelin cuts, the Lips do it justice (albeit in a skewed, off-centre, Flaming Lips sort of way). At 2:30, it’s missing a verse, but it is still one of those remarkable poetically bizarre musical moments.
The same can be said of the Lips cover of Neil Young’s After The Gold Rush, beginning with a crescendo of crashing cymbals and snares before slowing into a close approximation of the original’s tempo. There’s something appropriate about this cover, given the whole Young-Coyne voice similarities, and it’s largely a success. A Collection Of Songs… closes with I Want To Kill My Brother; The Cymbal Head, some three-minutes of fuzzy, grungy guitar work recorded by Coyne, guitarist Jonathon and band manager Scott for a compilation.
A Collection Of Songs Representing An Enthusiasm For Recording…By Amateurs is a remarkable album. Not only musically, where it inspires a primal, primitive sort-of appreciation through a shear sonic onslaught, but also as a historical artefact. It is a reminder to us above emotional and musical growth, as well as an additional perspective on exactly how the Flaming Lips’ meteoric musical rise came about. Because as dissonant and harsh as it sounds, it characterizes a great sense of growth for the Lips themselves. But perhaps the single most telling thing about this album and about the Flaming Lips in general is described in the liner notes:
“…And we found ourselves the accidental beneficiary of this unrealistic atmosphere and upon “Priest Driven’s” release at the very beginning of 1990 Warner Bros. offered us a recording deal that was for so much money we assumed it was a joke. And after all of our good luck and unwarranted longevity we, believe it or not, boldly asked for even more money… and got it.”
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