SOUND BITES

I've done variations on this theme several times in the past, usually after a long period of time during which I abandon my responsibilities around here and allow unreviewed releases to pile up high. Now that my "reviews" are shorter and without much deep thought involved, I kind of figured we wouldn't get to this point again so soon; and yet, here we are. Anyway, here are some albums I've checked out over the summer but not yet shared my opinions on; I could have done haiku just as easily as dropping one or two sentences as I have below, but it turns out I'm too lazy to even arrange this shit into the proper lines and syllables. Shrug. MONDO COZMO New Medicine June 12, 2020 • Last Gang Highlights Black Cadillac • Upside Down • Come On For his second album as Mondo Cozmo, Josh Ostrander got help from some heavy hitters; Black Rebel Motorcycle Club's Peter Hayes features heavily, both as a guest guitarist and co-producer, and previous single Come On was co...

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 ...