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18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Watch these Lips, 21 Jun 2000
By A Customer
The spirit of prog rock lives on with The Flaming Lips. From unwieldy titles ('Psychiatric Explorations of the Fetus with Needles' from 'Clouds Taste Metallic')to their four CD set, 'Zaireeka', which was intended to be played simultaneously on four stereos, their ideas have been grand or over-indulgent. Fortunately, 'The Soft Bulletin' lacks 20 minute guitar solos (in fact, guitars have a low key role) but it is a concept album of sorts.Ostensibly the songs are about science, maths and space but on another level it continues Wayne Coyne's focus on the big themes: life, love and death.Coyne's voice could easily be dismissed as whining, nasal and irritating but it has a teetering-on-the-edge quality matched only by Daniel Johnston; it is significant that the two instrumentals ('The Observer' and 'Sleeping on the Roof') are the driest and least satisfying tracks on 'The Soft Bulletin'. While it lacks the continual full-blast pop dynamics of 'Clouds Taste Metallic', Dave Fridmann's organised production provides compensations. The break for a solitary guitar and restrained orchestral sounds in 'Suddenly Everything Has Changed' and the abrupt shift during 'The Spark That Bled' heighten the impact of these songs. In contrast, 'The Gash', with choral effects on the vocals and thundering piano, falls prey to bombast. 'Feeling Yourself Disintegrate' survives a marching rhythm to convey the title's emotional state. 'Race for the Prize', about scientists searching for a cure but with an emphasis on their ordinary human qualities, and 'Waitin' for a Superman' are amongst their most immediate pop songs. While The Flaming Lips have not discovered a cure for cancer or communicated with aliens, they are producing music beyond the aspirations of ordinary mortals.
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17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
LAST GREAT ALBUM OF THE 20th CENTURY, 26 Oct 2003
Beautiful, fantastic, playful, like nothing on Earth. I Love The Flaming Lips, these Oklohoman oddballs have entered my heart like an everlasting love kissing me with their crazy, space music contemplating love, death, boredom, war, loss, sadness, beauty and most other things like a Dark Side Of The Moon for the generation of the microscooter, Hello Kitty backpacks and grunge, but no jazzy progisms just beautiful chiming guitars, weird time changes, buzzing noise and the weirdly wonderful words of my king WAYNE COYNE! It would sound eccentric (which I am) to explain but if you like Welsh crazymen Super Furry Animals buy in faith but still nothing sounds like this. I saw them on the 24th October, it was the best 1hr 30mins of my life- like the coming of the year 2000 but you were intoxicated by the beautiful sound, all the Soft Bulletin's symphonic swells, piano bursts, great guitars frying space sound great. THIS LP IS LIFE CHANGING! Also Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots is similarly fantastic, this is a message beamed from a planet of geometric clouds, bees kissing and hymns for mathematicans and if you're smart you'll buy a rocket and blast off now.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An album that'll take your mind to another dimension, 13 Mar 2001
As a witness to their 2000 Glastonbury performance - complete with fake blood, hand puppets and video projections of the Teletubbies - I can pay testimony to how great the Flaming Lips are. But unlike many choreographed boy-band facsimiles, their live performance doesn't belie poor music. In fact, The Soft Bulletin is a psychedelic marvel, blending together the best bits of Captain Beefheart and the Beach Boys. It's an album that works on its own internal logic, as demonstrated on the epic opener Race For The Prize, which places two scientists' raison d'etres' as "theirs is to win, if it kills them". Other highlights include the tender Waitin' For A Superman, What Is The Light?, and the cosmic A Spoonful Weighs A Ton, a song only improved upon when heard in sync with Tinky-Winky, Dipsy, La-La and Po. Lead singer Wayne Coyne isn't the greatest vocalist in the world, but his high-pitched warble somehow works, just as the use of theramin and dinner gongs work in their live shows. Buy this album now: it'll take your mind to another dimension.
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