The Flaming Lips
The Soft Bulletin [25th Anniversary Zoetrope Edition]
WARNER
Running is a recurring theme on The Flaming Lips’ classic 1999 psych-rock album The Soft Bulletin. Scientists race for a curative prize for mankind on the joyous opener and the instrumental “Suddenly Everything Has Changed” feels like an athlete coming down from a runner’s high (that or enduring an acid meltdown), while a “shadow dancing guy” emblazoned the original cover art. In the two-page liner notes for this new two-disc “Zoetrope Edition” celebrating 25 years of the record, frontman Wayne Coyne mentions his passion for running after quitting cigarettes while recording with producers Dave Fridmann and Scott Booker in the former’s Cassadaga, New York studio over the course of two years.
“I would run almost every day,” Coyne elaborates over text message. “It was (and still is) a great way to deal with stress and things that you can’t control.” Working in a remote part of New York state, Coyne one day came across a private residence that had a mountain lion in a big cage in their backyard. “I always thought how crazy that was, but then as I passed by this house I couldn’t hear or see the mountain lion in his cage (who knows why) and I immediately thought (wrongly but what can ya do), ‘oh man!!! If that mountain lion got out… he’s big enough that he could (maybe) kill a person if it’s really mad.’” Coyne immediately started running. “My heart pounded and I turned around and had a ways to go to get back to the studio. It’s funny how that kind of fear and adrenaline can really make ya run fast.”
Coyne’s father had recently passed before the recording of Soft Bulletin, and the theme of running through life is visually depicted on this beautiful 25th anniversary edition of the LP. The trippy, lithographic Zoetrope designs created by Drew Tetz with Coyne’s assistance look incredible, and all 13 tracks hold up perfectly well. It would’ve been nice to also see the recently released Soft Bulletin Companion, but the original album stands on its own without adding 56 bonus tracks like the Lips did two years ago with Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots’ 20th-anniversary box set (to say nothing of its companion Fight Test and Hypnotist EP reissues).
The Soft Bulletin’s evolutionary leap forward is typically hard to pull off for any band, but The Flaming Lips excelled at this strange melding of the psychedelic and pop worlds. When other ’90s groups withered away as the alt-rock era moved into the indie-rock age, the Lips launched into the festival circuit stratosphere. “A Spoonful Weighs a Ton” is a perfect microcosm of this change—like “Race for the Prize,” it’s a track about scientists under pressure (or, metaphorically, a band in the studio). This time they’re wagering with Earth’s clock by unleashing a wild experiment with the sun as strings, drum machine, flutes, and harp roll around in a super collider production.
After the departure of the noisy guitarist Ronald Jones in 1996, the Lips’ output in the late 1990s and throughout the 2000s was unexpected, to say the least. Rock shot through a pop symphony lens appeared in various guises for the albums that followed The Soft Bulletin. Even the one out-and-out dud in that discography, 2017’s Oczy Mlody, followed the general Soft Bulletin template despite the fact that its trippy fairy-tale visions were claustrophobic and dripping with melancholy.
Melancholy appears on most Flaming Lips albums, but it’s not quite as crystallized as The Soft Bulletin’s "Feeling Yourself Disintegrate.” This sad and beautiful song is about learning to accept the loss of a loved one by holding onto the nectar of new experiences. The marching and operatic hymn “The Gash” feels like Coyne fighting through the worst things in his life at the time, or running through the pain with a jolt of adrenaline. The album ends with “Sleeping on the Roof,” where Cassadaga recording nights, the sound of crickets, kitchen noises, and maybe a mountain lion seep into the record’s mix. The Flaming Lips are always running, and the prize of a perfect psych-pop album was in hand in 1999.
