AMERICAN HEAD

Spike Sidor

6 years ago

THE FLAMING LIPS

2020 PSYCH-ROCK/POP

American Head is the sixteenth studio album by the psychedelic rock band The Flaming Lips. The band has an extensive and varied discography, both in terms of style and quality. I myself haven’t taken a liking to a Lips record since Embryonic way back in 2009, and this album is no exception, just like their discography, American Head is spotty. I usually never read press releases for albums but I saw a few pull quotes from reviews before I listened that said this album was “emotional” and “deeply personal”. Deceptive does not begin to start; not to discredit Mr. Coyne’s experiences but to make them real you need to connect with the audience, his vagueness does not. Calling it deeply personal is like calling the first two sentences of a Wikipedia article a memoir.

The sound of this album will be familiar to anyone who has dipped their toes into the Lips music. Lavish psychedelic instrumentation, sparkling synths, woah oh backing vocals, and loads of reverb on anything it’ll stick to. The record starts off fantastically. The first track, When You Return / When You Come Down, has a great instrumental with a duet of weeping and twinkling keys. Acoustic guitar chords and a solid beat drive the track forward. Coyne sings sorrowfully, wondering if his friends will ever return from a terrible accident. The next track is a surprise as it feels like an interlude with Coyne and the Lip’s signature songwriting style both riding the bench, but it’s only the second track. A steady beat over angelic femme vocal tones with some psychedelic bass and guitars make for solid song but not a memorable one. Flowers on Neptune 6 is a colorful slowburner with sorrowful strings and echoing drums adding texture similar to the first track. The chorus is built up to well and explodes with a satisfying crescendo of piano keys and Coyne crying out,

Oh my god, why is it them?
Oh my god, now it’s me

The extinction of the good tracks begins after Dinosaurs on the Mountain. A very cute song with playful synths starting things off followed by familiar sonic notes from previous tracks. The lyrics are a fun little daydream about seeing dinosaurs playing on the mountain, a prospect that can’t help but make me smile. It’s at Mother I’ve taken LSD that the album takes a nosedive. Coyne yelps out comically unpoetic lines about taking LSD and now seeing the sadness in the world as a result. No, I’m not even kidding, these are the exact lines

Mother, I’ve taken LSD
I thought it would set me free
But now I think it’s changed me
It’s changed me
It’s changed me
It’s changed me
Now I see the sadness in the world
I’m sorry I didn’t see it before
Now I see the sadness in the world
Sad, sad, sad, sad
Sadness, sadness
Sadness, sadness

A completely inane realization that garners more eye rolling than emotional introspection. A good change of pace comes in Brother Eye with patient synths moaning and sci-fi bleeps traveling across the audio channels. Coyne delivery feels pained but is antithetical to personable. He doesn’t want his brother to die, as do most people who have brothers. You n Me Sellin’ Weed is another head scratcher. Sophomoric lyrics about selling dope with your best gal, being free, and high all the time. Notably this track features a few really obnoxious instrumental choices, a mooing cow sample, the out of nowhere completely goofy background vocals, a loud laser sound bite, just to name a few. Mother Please Don’t Be Sad is a little piano ballad which builds to a trite crescendo with climbing strings and a slow beat. Coyne cries out apologies to his Mother for dying in robbery then mixes it with a sixteen year old shower thought; wondering if people really die if they go when they are high. It comes off so serious but this bad trip detour only conjures chuckles. The appropriately named When We Die When We’re High follows. At first glance it seems like it would be a continuation of the previous song but no, it’s a driving instrumental piece whose main distinction is echoing mallet percussion. It’s fine and the fact that Coyne doesn’t open his mouth to say something stupid on most of its run length helps. Assassins of Youth takes us on a style departure with a highly psychedelic take on western but we are meet with our familiar friends, vague lyrics ramble into a chorus stuffed with brilliant observations

I was young yesterday
But now everything has changed after today
And I don’t know what to do
Oh, my youngest self I, I miss you
Yes, I do

Thanks, Wayne. Getting old does indeed suck, it must have taken a herculean effort to evoke these lines about your midlife crisis. God and the Policeman features a Kacey Musgraves duet which works horribly, not sure who thought Kacey’s country twang would mix with Coyne distorted whining, luckily the track passes by quickly and is forgotten just as fast. The final track, My Religion Is You, saves the corniest dribble for last. It’s precisely what the title sounds like, a track about loving someone so much they are your religion. Yeah, no one has ever made that comparison before. Sure it’s banal as all get out but the real hit of this song is the laughable verses such as

Yeah, Buddha’s cool
And you’re no fool to believe anything
You need to believe in if Hare Krishna
Maybe it’s the thing for you

And this knee slapper,

If being a Christian
Is your thing then
Own it friend
Don’t phone it in

At this point in the runtime it’s hard not to laugh at how pathetic the writing is. Overall, American Head is a mixed bag, in fact I would say there’s a substantial difference in quality from the first half or so to the second. The psychedelic instrumentation on this record is great, but it gets bogged down badly by repetitive compositions and, as mentioned many a time, the surface level writing that correlates superficiality with intimacy. It leaves me wondering if anyone has the ability to question Coyne’s scrawling.

4/10

AMERICAN HEAD

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