Though more conventional in concept and scope than Zaireeka, The Soft Bulletin clearly reflects its predecessor’s expansive sonic palette. „So where does a band go after releasing the most defiantly experimental record of its career? If you’re the Flaming Lips, you keep rushing headlong into the unknown – The Soft Bulletin, their follow-up to the four-disc gambit Zaireeka, is in many ways their most daring work yet, a plaintively emotional, lushly symphonic pop masterpiece eons removed from the mind-warping noise of their past efforts. „The Soft Bulletin“ raises such pre-millennial realist/fantasy notions in the midst of a 90s “Tomorrow Never Knows,” and in the process setting a high bar for the last great rock-era records of the 20th century. Songs like “Superman,” “Feeling Yourself Disintegrate” and a half-dozen others, hint at the hopelessness of life’s outcome while maintaining a sense of faith (a common Lips theme).
The music adds a context of grandeur to Coyne’s lyrics of Zen and the cosmic joke.
Long-time producer and Mercury Rev studio savant Dave Fridmann helps with the completion of a Spectorian sonic canvas, full of epic gestures (glorious sweeping strings arrangements) and brilliant details (well-placed thematic samples). Obviously, the experience greatly influenced the band’s direction, because on „The Soft Bulletin“ the Lips again scrap the guitar-bass-drum rock standard, sculpting instead a huge hi-fi record akin to a post-modern pet sounds with the vision of a humanist OK computer. With their multi-disc opus „Zaireeka“ (four CDs meant to be played simultaneously on four different players), the Flaming Lips radically expanded the scope of their melancholy psychedelia, as pop tunes became modernist soundscapes, part-Pink Floyd, part-John Cage. Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Warner Records The Flaming Lips – The Soft Bulletin (1999/2017)įLAC (tracks) 24-bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 58:26 minutes | 659 MB | Genre: Alternative, Indie
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