The Flaming Lips

Hometown: Oklahoma City, OK
Tags: indie, alternative, indie rock

The Flaming Lips are an American rock band, formed in Norman, Oklahoma in 1983.

The weirder, jokier and more indulgent the Flaming Lips get, the more their fans seem to love them. With their whimsical tunes about astral phenomena and spider bites, Merry Prankster-style stage antics, and a frontman with a voice that evokes Neil Young on nitrous oxide, the Oklahoma City band managed to build a cult following that exploded into something bigger in the late Nineties and 2000s.

Melodically, their sound contains lush, multi-layered, psychedelic rock arrangements, but lyrically their compositions show elements of space rock, including unusual song and album titles—such as “Psychiatric Explorations of the Fetus with Needles”, "Free Radicals (A Hallucination of the Christmas Skeleton Pleading with a Suicide Bomber)" and “Yeah, I Know It’s a Drag… But Wastin’ Pigs Is Still Radical”. They are also acclaimed for their elaborate live shows, which feature costumes, balloons, puppets, video projections, complex stage light configurations, giant hands, large amounts of confetti, and frontman Wayne Coyne’s signature man-sized plastic bubble, in which he traverses the audience. In 2002, Q magazine named The Flaming Lips one of the “50 Bands to See Before You Die”.

The group recorded several albums and EPs on an indie label, Restless, in the 1980s and early 1990s. After signing to Warner Brothers, they scored a hit in 1993 with “She Don’t Use Jelly”. Although it has been their only hit single in the U.S., the band has maintained critical respect and, to a lesser extent, commercial viability through albums such as 1999’s The Soft Bulletin (which was NME magazine’s Album of the Year) and 2002’s Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. They have had more hit singles in the UK and Europe than in the U.S. In February 2007, they were nominated for a 2007 BRIT Award in the “Best International Act” category. By 2007, the group garnered three Grammy Awards, including two for Best Rock Instrumental Performance.

On October 13, 2009 the group released their latest studio album, titled Embryonic. On December 22, 2009, the Flaming Lips released a remake of the 1973 Pink Floyd album The Dark Side Of The Moon. In 2011, the band announced plans to release new songs in every month of the year, with the entire process filmed.

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Spinner Best of 2012 on The Flaming Lips

3 months ago

#50 Remember when you were a teenager and you'd siphon a single shot out of each of your parents liquor bottles to create some unholy concoction of rum, vodka, Southern Comfort and peach schnapps that you'd puke out three hours later at a bush party? ...full article here

KCRW's Jason Bentley on The Flaming Lips

6 months ago

Played "Silver Trembling Hands" 11/20/2012 10:07 am

Pitchfork Best New Tracks on The Flaming Lips

7 months ago

The Flaming Lips: "Watching the Planets"

My editor says that I only get 300 of a requested 1,500 words to write about "Watching the Planets" , so I'll start by talking about the guy who has been playing gong for the Flaming Lips at recent shows. "Watching the Planets" is over five minutes long, and this guy bangs the gong at the beginning of nearly every bar, which amounts to a lot of gong. (Does he wear earplugs?) And when the gong's not being hit, it's ringing. That's what gongs do. And I mention it because I can't help but feel like the gong guy is more entrenched in the song than a seed in an apple, brain-dead and liberated-- not unlike the.....[from Embryonic ; out now on Warner Bros. ]

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Buzz Bands LA on The Flaming Lips

7 months ago

Not sure anybody this far north on the Golden State Freeway has made a big deal of this, but the Doheny Days Festival — Sept. 8-9 at Doheny State Beach in Dana Point — has assembled a formidable lineup including Jane's Addiction, the Flaming Lips, Jimmy Eat World and Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros. Delta Spirit, Beats Antique, Rebelution and Anuhea are the other announced artists so far. Two-day passes are currently going for $80 ($175 for VIP and $350 for a "Lounge Pass"). For the geographically challenged, picturesque Doheny State Beach is more here

Quit Mumbling on The Flaming Lips

7 months ago

Tweet It was an uneventful Saturday stuck sitting at home, but when you have The Flaming Lips' Transmissions of the Satellite Heart , The Soft Bulletin , Embryonic , and of course, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots , doing nothing can sound so good. The latter album is a fantastically strange journey into a musical fiction about love, technology, and survival. It's a serious but extremely playful story. I could have helped you wake up with "Do You more here

KCRW's Garth Trinidad on The Flaming Lips

8 months ago

Played "Silver Trembling Hands" 10/03/2012 9:54 am

Quit Mumbling on The Flaming Lips

8 months ago

Pitchfork Best Albums on The Flaming Lips

9 months ago

Album "Embryonic" scored 9.0

In a shocking turn, the Flaming Lips offer their most audacious undertaking since Zaireeka, an unrelentingly paranoid, static-soaked acid-rock epic. There's a raw directness to Embryonic that's been l...

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Pip on The Flaming Lips

almost 6 years ago

Pip on The Flaming Lips

almost 6 years ago

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The Flaming Lips