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IN REVIEW: The Flaming Lips - "Oczy Mlody"


The good news: The Flaming Lips' fourteenth album is more listenable than the two that came before it (2009's Embryonic and 2013's The Terror). The bad news: interesting sonic ideas aside, Oczy Mlody's weirdness veers more toward annoying than endearing. There are occasional flashbacks to their peak period, but the majority of the songs here are haphazard slabs of cold, electronic head-scratchers. Likewise, whereas Wayne Coyne's lyrics used to offer some human connection and even affirmation sprinkled in, this record's half-baked concept (people take a drug that lets them sleep for three months, proceed to see things) limits the lyric sheet to meaningless, trite, stream-of-consciousness acidspeak (sample: "there should be unicorns / the ones with the purple eyes / not the green eyes").

A critic's score for Oczy Mlody may be proportional to the level of chemical dependency the critic has; in which case, it would score a zero from this lame-o drug-free reviewer. That said, I'll give it a slight handicap because I'm willing to take it on faith that it reveals more the more fucked up you are, but I'm certainly not willing to add a drug habit onto my music buying addiction, especially for an album with seemingly as little true substance to offer as this.

January 13, 2017 • Warner Bros.
Highlights How?? • The Castle • We a Family

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