The band's earliest recordings were improvised soundtracks to TV nature documentaries and student films. in the State University of New York at Buffalo's Media Studies program.īy 1989, Shady Crady had evolved into Mercury Rev (a name whose inspiration was variously attributed to an imaginary Russian ballet dancer, a sharp rise in temperature, or a revved-up auto), with Grasshopper switching to guitar. After playing with the local Buffalo groups the People's Front and Sunny in Chernobyl in the early '80s, Grasshopper began playing bass with Shady Crady, an avant-garde band who also included Donahue among their members, while pursuing a B.A. As a child, Grasshopper studied clarinet and loved jazz artists like John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, and Miles Davis later, when he began playing guitar, he drew from classic rockers such as Neil Young and the Allman Brothers as well as the Velvet Underground's Sterling Morrison and Television's Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd. As they continued to evolve with 2008's electronic Snowflake Midnight and paid homage to one of the great underappreciated albums with 2019's Bobbie Gentry's The Delta Sweete Revisited, heartfelt emotion and experimentation remained equally vital to Mercury Rev's music.įormed out of the experimental art and music scene at the State University of New York at Buffalo in the late '80s, Mercury Rev originally featured vocalist David Baker, vocalist/guitarist Jonathan Donahue, guitarist/clarinetist Grasshopper (born Sean Mackowiak), flutist Suzanne Thorpe, bassist Dave Fridmann, and drummer Jimy Chambers. Though Mercury Rev won critical acclaim from the start, they didn't achieve commercial success until their 1998 breakthrough album, Deserter's Songs, which combined intimate songwriting with a fresh take on Americana.
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As their lineup changed, their musical horizons expanded on 1995's See You on the Other Side, they added adventurous free jazz excursions and lullaby-like melodies with striking results. The volatility of the group's early days likely added an extra spark to the one-of-a-kind mix of shoegaze, noise pop, psychedelic, and experimental music on 1991's Yerself Is Steam and 1993's Boces, which offered the first hint of just how ambitious their music became later in the decade. It is a musical experience that can not be described.Beginning as avant-pop pranksters and evolving into purveyors of rootsy, majestic psych-pop, Mercury Rev aren't so much a band as a long, strange trip. No album has ever sounded like this, and no album ever will. This is The Flaming Lips being dirtier and more abrasive than they have ever been, and worrying more about making a solid album rather than single songs. A sprawling, noisy masterpiece, “Embryonic” treads through the spacey ambient sounds of “The Soft Bulletin” and mixes it with raw, at times demonic sounding jam outs. While many have tried, nobody has been able to match the Lips and with 2009’s “Embryonic,” they have pushed even farther into the wilderness.
Not just their music, but music in general. After over 20 years of defying musical tradition and creating a market for psychedelic-electronic-jam-pop-rock (unfortunately, you can’t even define this band in under fifteen genre tags), The Flaming Lips have once again pushed music in a different direction. Definitely a must for music lovers of all kinds.Īlbum Review 15: The Flaming Lips – Embryonic Overall, this album flows wonderfully and is the perfect example of great lyrics, which create themes that match the music all the way through. While this album remains unique compared to most other bands just as much as their older material, it does so in a different way, moving to sparkling sounds and endearing songwriting rather than drugged out, lo-fi jams. Overview: This gem of The Flaming Lips’ already expansive discography marks a focus that the group had never before embraced.
While it’s a solid album listen and great artistic piece, we couldn’t help but feel left wanting more songwriting ideas and aggressive presentation to help give this record more gusto.Īlbum Review 380: The Flaming Lips – The Soft Bulletin This album doesn’t show the songwriting skills we know the band is capable of. Melody, other than Wayne Coyne’s vocals, is pretty much nonexistent it’s been replaced by the rhythmic drawls we heard on 2009’s Embryonic, distorted electric guitars and bass making the underbelly of the sound with subtle synths adding background atmosphere. This is definitely a departure from previous Lips works and focuses on more minimalistic, atmospheric songs. Overview: The Flaming Lips continue their experimental nature with The Terror, an album that supposedly examines the world without love in it. Album Review 598: The Flaming Lips – The Terror