MGMT & Karen O Guest On New Flaming Lips Album
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Artist:
When scouting for guests on the Flaming Lips' follow-up to 2006's At War with the Mystics frontman Wayne Coyne just picked up the phone. "For the Karen O tracks," he told Swiss website Die Klangschau, "I just called her up in her hotel room and we just did it right over the telephone. It's pretty absurd." The Yeah Yeah Yeahs frontwoman is expected to appear on more than one track on the album. But then when it comes to the Flaming Lips, whose live perfomances usually include buttloads of confetti, Coyne surfing the crowd in a giant bubbles, and a dancing lot dressed up in everything from aliens to Santa Clauses to fuzzy animals - when are things not absurd?
For the new album, titled Embryonic and due this Septmeber, Coyne and co had to settle for a double LP because the band naturally wants "to go in so many strange directions and sometimes we're unfocused and sometimes we're just so wishy-washy," he told BBC 6 Music earlier int he year. The album, the Grammy-winning Oklahoma band's (gasp!) 12th, includes some spoken word from Coyne as well as another cameo from MGMT.
"For us, making a double record means that there's more room to be strange. When [you] are making a very precise ten or eleven tracks, you want a really focused mood with an arc in it. Whereas I think with a double record, you're allowed to be abstract, freaky and unfocused - and that appealed to us. We really wanted to have the songs overtake us."
The Lips jump on the road beginning July 19th in Chicago, then some stops in Australia before returning to the states.
Flaming Lips tour dates:
| Sun, 07/19/2009 | Chicago, IL United States | More Info |
| Tue, 07/28/2009 | Moore Park Australia | More Info |
| Wed, 07/29/2009 | West Melbourne Australia | More Info |
| Sun, 08/09/2009 | Tokyo Japan | More Info |
| Sat, 08/15/2009 | Del Mar, CA United States | More Info |
| Mon, 08/17/2009 | Los Angeles, CA United States | More Info |
| Tue, 08/18/2009 | Pomona, CA United States | More Info |
| Thu, 08/20/2009 | Troutdale, OR United States | More Info |
| Fri, 08/21/2009 | Redmond, WA United States | More Info |
| Sun, 08/23/2009 | Morrison, CO United States | More Info |
| Wed, 08/26/2009 | Atlanta, GA United States | More Info |
| Fri, 08/28/2009 | Washington, DC United States | More Info |
| Sat, 08/29/2009 | Philadelphia, PA United States | More Info |
| Sun, 08/30/2009 | Boston, MA United States | More Info |
| Sun, 09/13/2009 | Monticello, NY United States |
Locating MOG account...
Comments (5)
Hopefully The Flaming Lips can teach MGMT a thing or two about being cool without trying so hard.
The collaborations will either be awesome or awful, I guess only time will tell eh...
Chris
Awe come on now. I like it that they try. And you have to admit that their music is still fun without the owl rides and the moon goo.
But then again I do find that the fact they are selling vinyls at urban outfitters a little grotesque.
I have a feeling though that the Lips signed them on to get a piece of the hipster pie rather than reign them in.
Yeah I guess MGMT featuring on The Flaming Lips album will convert more MGMT fans to the Lips rather than the other way around.
I guess you have to try to begin with, I'm just waiting for some new material to see which direction they head in, if any...
over the phone? consider my interest peaked.
As much as I love the Lips, I do have a worrying sense of this being a more hipster-orientated 'Zaireeka', but I'm sure that's just pre-release paranoia. In Wayne I trust.