Elsewhere you've got the rollicking "The Gash," speaker-shredding bombast with a galvanizing march "Buggin'" perhaps best captures the indie pop-rock sound of prior work, pure pop hooks with pianos instead of raging guitars and "The Spiderbite Song" earnestly relates recent tragedies with poignant lyrics and dramatic percussion.
"Race for the Prize" leaps out of the gate with Wayne Coyne's helium-tinged vox and unearthly synth sounds signaling the Yes affinity, with a literal tale of two scientists racing for a cure establishing the album's lyrical themes. More than that, I became enthralled by its surprisingly earnest optimism and lyrical directness, its bold forays into keyboard-based bombast still grounded by joyous melodicism. Unexpected and odd, I set it aside.īut a few weeks later I decided to give it a listen with fresh ears, and this time it stuck.
This thing was dense and complex and orchestrated and, yeah, really kinda proggy, with nary a distorted guitar to be found. I expected some more of that noisy-but-poppy guitar rock a la "Jelly," and was pretty shocked by what sounded like the second coming of Yes. Unfortunately, that first impression of what turned out to be a very different band than they'd evolve into over the years led me to pretty much ignore them for a decade, even when they became an unlikely alt.rock breakout on the heels of 1993's "She Don't Use Jelly."īut the hype around 1999's The Soft Bulletin was inescapable, so I decided to give them another shot - and once again, a negative first impression almost blew the whole deal. I was a college DJ when the Flaming Lips' first album came out back in 1986, and its rough, lo-fi amped-up garage rock didn't do much for me. One of my favorite albums of the 90s, and one I almost passed over due to giving too much weight to first impressions.
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