The Flaming Lips' "Oczy Mlody:" A Non-Euclidean Escape

I watched Obama’s election as I was moving to Austin from Carrollton with no small amount of anticipation and excitement, and when he won the Presidency the world felt different. Although might have been inexperienced at the time, I had some conviction that he had the best interests of the country at heart, an opinion that did not change much during his tenure. I was proud to be an American and was genuinely hopeful about the future.

This inauguration, conversely, filled me with dread. I felt, and still feel, anxious about the natural and social environment that my kids will be looking at in the near and far future. Like many, I have traveled through stages in dealing with this new reality, so during my denial phase I made it my goal to avoid the inauguration entirely to keep the ratings down. This may seem escapist, but I justified it by showing my lack of support in any way possible. The same weekend, I put Oczy Mlody in rotation.

There seemed to be no better way to escape reality than to sink into the soft non-euclidean psychedelia of The Flaming Lips. Very few bands have been able to retain both a modicum of visibility and the kind of artistic freedom that The Flaming Lips enjoy. They could literally put out an album of duck sounds and people would at least take notice. That being said, I was on the fence about this one.

In the band’s primary narrative, there has been an attempt to collapse their experimental side with mainstream songwriting in search of a singular, cohesive statement. This, I like. Simultaneously, however, they have been diversifying in ways that aren’t as convincing, releasing shark-jumping cover albums and collaborations. Despite my long-term investment in the band, these recent releases made me consider taking a pass on Oczy Mlody. The video for The Castle, however, immediately sold me.



Oczy Mlody is the first “proper” Flaming Lips album since The Terror, which took darker themes and washed them over with buzzy experimentalism. In comparison, Oczy Mlody juxtaposes brighter, trippy songs against psychedelic sound experiments. This approach allows them to incorporate a broad spectrum of sounds that they have explored in other non-traditional formats, from multi-jambox CD releases to flash drives released in gummi skulls.

But I see The Flaming Lips as primarily an album band. For decades, they have released consistently coherent recordings that are best digested as a whole, rather than as a collection of singles. Oczy Mlody is impressively strong in this regard. Paradoxically, however, the individual parts that make up the album feel less focused. There are a few songs that emerge from the experience, but these are surrounded by floating ambient sound experiments, fuzzed-out jams, and spaghetti-western guitar themes.



Although some critics have taken exception to the album’s lack of clear boundaries, my increased interest in instrumental music and soundtracks may have enriched my appreciation of Oczy Mlody. It doesn’t feature the standout melodies of some of their earlier works, but in terms of texture and flow, it’s still quite convincing. At the same time, although it seems that the band is focusing more in being weird than making a clear statement, there does seem to be a coherent narrative that lies beyond the songwriting upon which they built their image.

The Jellyfish Family Tree Part 6: Cookin' With Beck and Mraz

Because Brendan Benson was never actually in Jellyfish, I set a somewhat daunting precedent when I included him in this series. Jellyfish’s members have contributed their talents to numerous projects, and to take them all into account might stretch this project on almost indefinitely. Although I have often used the presence of Jellyfish members to guide my listening choices, there are many albums that they have co-written or played on that I simply have not heard.  There are, however, some that have become favorites.

In the late 90s, Jellyfish and Imperial Drag keyboardist Roger Joseph Manning was a studio contributor on Beck’s Mutations, and was also a member of the performing band during the tour to support the album. Mutations is the release in which Beck revealed just what a chameleon he is. For artists like David Bowie, Madonna, and Prince, reinvention was a matter of course. Beck’s identity shifts were never quite as dramatic, but they were no less jarring. After the ramshackle hobo pop of Mellow Gold and the genre-bending whiteboy funk of Odelay, Mutations, a relatively atmospheric and somber offering, was a bit of a surprise.


When Mutations came out, I was already a fan of Beck. When I discovered that Manning made significant keyboard contributions to the album, however, it reframed the entire listening experience. By this point in his career, his experiments with The Moog Cookbook, a series of tongue-in-cheek parodies of 70s keyboard albums, solidified his status as the go-to torchbearer for classic keyboard sounds. Mutations has a somewhat retro feel to it, and undoubtedly Manning contributed greatly to this sound.

I did not follow the Moog Cookbook, but I did get into one of Manning's analog keyboard experiments.  In 2000, he, along with collaborator Brian Reitzell, released Logan's Sanctuary, a soundtrack to an imaginary sequel to the 1976 film Logan's Run.  I was particularly interested in this release because it featured a couple of collaborations with Jason Falkner that were pretty good, but overall its stylistic relationship with Jellyfish was tenuous at best.  



Despite his experimental side, Manning was always able to keep one foot in the pop realm.  Several years later, I became a fan of Jason Mraz's sophomore release, Mr. A-Z.  This album came to have special meaning during the Carrollton Period.  It will one day deserve its own posting, but I have to mention it here because I remember quite clearly being inexorably drawn to the funky analog bass sounds in Geek in the Pink.  I was hardly surprised when the liner notes revealed that Manning contributed keyboards to the track.



Again, Manning's resume has done nothing but grow rhizomatically since his days in Jellyfish - far beyond my ability to keep up.  Although he has played keyboards on numerous albums with a variety of artists, he remains a transparent contributor that, paradoxically, always lets his unique character shine through.  Undoubtedly, there will be fans who implore me to include their overlooked favorites, and I hope they will. Most likely, these suggestions will make their way into rotation in the near future.

To review the previous post in this series, hit me up here.
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The Beach Boys of Winter: The Fleet Foxes

The move to Austin in 2008 was a particularly traumatic one.  On the weekdays I was commuting from Carrollton to Denton for work and school and to Austin on the weekends to visit my soon-to-be wife.  At the same time, I was selling a house during a panicked recession, writing my thesis, and generally coming to terms with myself.  I despise the feeling of chaos that moving brings, but in this particular case, I think that being unseated in such a way gave me the opportunity to be more contemplative and reflective than usual. 

Both in the car and in the nearly empty house, The Fleet Foxes was playing non-stop during this introspective end of the "Carrollton Period."  There was a buzz surrounding this band online when their debut album was released, but it was this video that sold me.

White Winter Hymnal is immediately haunting and engaging, characteristics that spill over into the entirety of Fleet Foxes.  These qualities are very, very difficult to describe, and it was a struggle to write a review on Amazon that really captured how I was experiencing the album's nearly instantaneous nostalgia.  Another reviewer, however, simply described the Fleet Foxes as “The Beach Boys of Winter,” which has stuck for me ever since (can't take credit for it, though).

Although the Beach Boys metaphor is generally appropriate in regards to the obvious vocal prowess of the Fleet Foxes, I also interpret it as a specific reference to Pet Sounds.  There is a complex history and many assumptions surrounding this album, but in short, it was Brian Wilson at his creative and expressive peak.  It is a singularly unique entry in the Beach Boys canon, and even if you normally don’t like the band, it is difficult not to at least appreciate its childlike exuberance.

Granted, the similarity between the two albums is not measureable.  Undoubtedly there is a lot about the Fleet Foxes that says “campfire” rather than “surf’s up.”  There is something passionate and intimate that both albums capture, however, that is, to me, perhaps inexplicable but intuitively palpable.   

 
Earlier this month, the Fleet Foxes’ second album, Helplessness Blues, was released, and is becoming the soundtrack to a current, but far less stressful, move.  This recent effort is perhaps a bit more experimental and opaque than their debut.  It does not, however, eschew the evocative ambience that I associate with the band.

For the sake of accessibility, I might suggest their debut as an introduction.  If you are already a fan, however, I think that Helplessness Blues will similarly capture your interest, and it will probably stand on its own quite well as a starting point.

"Challengers," a Marathon, and My Gratitude

In late 2008, towards the end of the “Carrollton period,” I was in the process of fundamentally redefining myself. As a part of this general life overhaul, I participated in the Dallas White Rock Marathon. I was part of a relay team, so I only ran seven miles, but considering the general state of my physical and mental health not six months before there was a lot to be proud of. My contribution probably did not do much to make us more competitive, but I think it is safe to say that our team’s overall goal was more about strengthening the friendship between us than making good time.

As I walked to the base of Reunion Tower, I was still humming the tune from the car: Challengers by the New Pornographers. I was introduced to this band in the morally ambiguous days of Napster and later I bought the quirky and sometimes angular Twin Cinema on a rainy weekend in Boston. The more musically exuberant and lyrically introspective Challengers was in regular rotation at this time, however, and it just happened to be what was playing as I participated the weekend of the marathon.




Most groups wear their influences on their sleeve, cobbled together into an often clearly identifiable patchwork, but the New Pornographers obscure their influences in stratified layers. They have some vague stylistic associations with Cheap Trick, David Bowie, the Cars, and Genesis (pop period), but overall, the New Pornographers coalesce these styles into their own densely melodic approach. There is hardly a second of Challengers that passes without some sort of addictive hook thrown in the mix somewhere.

Despite this complexity, The New Pornographers write memorable, singable tunes with slightly ambiguous but vivid lyrics. Although vocal duties are shared within the group, having Neko Case in this band is like hiding a weapon of mass destruction. Her vocal delivery invariably breathes a unique life into the New Pornographer’s lyrics, and her songs danced on the edge of my consciousness all afternoon. When the event was over I returned to the car exhausted. Challengers started right where it left off at the base of the Tower, though, reifying the satisfaction and solidarity I felt from a day well spent in the company of friends.



Participating in the White Rock Marathon with the people on my team ended up being very special and important to me personally. Very often, I unfortunately don’t recognize the importance of these kinds of moments until they are long gone. As I relistened to Challengers this afternoon, it brought that day back somewhat, and I wanted to take this post express my gratitude to the people who were involved. Even if you don’t think that you did anything, you did something, and for that I thank you.