Description
Heavyweight Tri-Colour 2xLP on Bella Union, housed in a gatefold sleeve.
MP3 download code printed on inner sleeve.
‘AMERICAN HEAD’ finds The Flaming Lips basking in more
reflective lyrical places as Wayne Coyne explains in a longer form
story about the album. Excerpt below:
“Even though The Flaming Lips are from Oklahoma we never
thought of ourselves as an AMERICAN band. I know growing up
(when I was like 6 or 7 years old) in Oklahoma I was never
influenced by, or was very aware of any musicians from
Oklahoma. We mostly listened to The Beatles and my mother
loved Tom Jones (this is in the 60’s)... it wasn’t till I was about 10
or 11 that my older brothers would know a few of the local
musician dudes. So... for most of our musical life we’ve kind of
thought of ourselves as coming from ‘Earth’... not really caring
WHERE we were actually from. So for the first time in our musical
life we began to think of ourselves as ‘AN AMERICAN BAND’...
telling ourselves that it would be our identity for our next creative
adventure. We had become a 7-piece ensemble and were
beginning to feel more and more of a kinship with groups that
have a lot of members in them. We started to think of classic
American bands like The Grateful Dead and Parliament-
Funkadelic and how maybe we could embrace this new vibe.
The music and songs that make up the AMERICAN HEAD album
are based in a feeling. A feeling that, I think, can only be
expressed through music and songs. We were, while creating it,
trying to NOT hear it as sounds... but to feel it. Mother’s sacrifice,
Father’s intensity, Brother’s insanity, Sister’s rebellion...I can’t
quite put it into words.
Something switches and others (your brothers and sisters and
mother and father...your pets) start to become more important
to you...in the beginning there is only you... and your desires are
all that you can care about...but... something switches.. I think all
of these songs are about this little switch.”
Produced by longtime collaborator Dave
Fridmann and The Lips. Among them, “God and
the Policeman” features backing vocals from
country superstar Kacey Musgraves. AMERICAN
HEAD takes on a welcome temporal shift that
occupies a similar space to that of ‘The Soft
Bulletin’ or ‘Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots’ and
just may be their most beautiful and consistent
work to date.
