NAME: The Flaming Lips
PROGRESS REPORT: Wrapping up recording on their 12th studio album, Embryonic: "We think it's gonna be called Embryonic but we don't know if it's gonna just be called Embryonic or it's gonna be called Embryonic and...something else, but we think it's gonna be called Embryonic. You can write that if you want and not be humiliated later."
Like a lot of properties in this economy, Steven Drodz's old house lingered on the market for about a year. But this victim of the current real estate market also turned out to be the perfect recording studio for the Flaming Lips' new album. The band set up their guitars and mics all over the multi-instrumentalists' old home over the last year, using the resonant space to record their follow-up to 2006's At War With The Mystics. "You can't do these things when a house is full of furniture and carpeting. The sound doesn't reverberate with as much clarity, or excitement, or whatever you want to call it," says Lips leader Wayne Coyne. They've been "dicking around" since then, taking a few minutes of one recorded session and splicing it to another few minutes, then saving the puzzle for another day of overdubs. The Flaming Lips have always relied on a mix of computers and fucking around to find unexpected combinations, and Coyne says it's led to a schizophrenic--but still organic--album this time. "We had stuff that we thought didn't sound like anything that we would have purposely done, that we had accidentally stumbled upon like it was somebody else's music," he says. "It's free rock. Free freakout rock. It doesn't really have a song underneath it. It's just freaking out."
Coyne compares that aspect of the album to a Miles Davis group. But Embryonic has another side to it -- simpler, sparse tracks that he compares to John Lennon's more meditative songs like "Imagine" and "Instant Karma." "I don't think we've done this combination on purpose before. So that's kinda where we're at. We have like 10 or 11 songs that kind of go between being utterly free freakouts and songs that are very simple that are a couple of instruments playing," he says. Later this month the Flaming Lips will head back to the studio for three more weeks to sift through the material that will eventually become Embryonic .
The band hasn't released anything from Embryonic yet, and their last new song "Anything You Say Now I Believe You", from the Know Your Mushrooms soundtrack, doesn't say much about their next record. "There's a similarity to the attitudes but not a similarity to the instruments. But I could see them being on the same record but not feeling like they didn't belong together," Coyne says. A better hint at how the Lips are making "this new flavor of ice cream" is his description of "Convinced Of The Hex," an Embryonic song he's particularly excited about. It began as a "strange jam," that producer Dave Fridmann liked. Coyne spurted out some "dumb lyrics" and a vocal line that somehow worked. The whole process was haphazard, but Coyne says that's when the Lips are at their best. "I think most of our really good moments really do happen by accident," he says. The rest of their lengthy recording time has gone into refining those accidents and finding their best parts. "There's plenty of regrets. There's plenty of embarrassing things along the way. But embarrassment and art go together. If you're not willing to be humiliated, your art's probably too fucking boring."
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