“At War With Mystics” MP3s
Get ready for At War With the Mystics, The Flaming Lips’ new album. Amazon says it’s out in April, though most of the songs have already found their way to the web. I’m posting my two favorites, along with Wayne Coyne’s own commentary on them.
The buzz I heard was that they were “declaring war” on people like Gwen Stefani and Britney Spears, but after reading Coyne’s explanation of “The Sound of Failure”, I’m not so sure it’s really that intense.
“Of course there’s a lot of stuff about battling wizards and warlocks and people like that, because we’re a rock band and that’s what rock bands do in some small way,” Coyne laughed. “But when I was writing these songs, I found myself thinking about a lot of people like Destiny’s Child and the Black Eyed Peas, people like Britney Spears and Gwen Stefani, which is sort of strange for me.”
Duh, of course there’s wizards and warlocks!
“Steven had been recording in a separate vocal booth on his computer and I walked by and heard the crazy grouped vocals doing the “yeah yeah yeah” part and I was immediately hooked. This is one of those songs that points the finger at the pettiness of those in power but also points the finger back at ourselves - what would YOU do? Power in the hands of the inexperienced (which is what we would be) is very dangerous…”
Nothing like a song about the pettiness of those in power featuring a clap track. Only the Flaming Lips can pull that shit off.
We have some friends whose father was dying of cancer - I say “was” because it (the cancer and his death) dragged on agonizingly for over a year - and they (our friends) were becoming, understandably, weary of being forced to be upbeat…
And I remember hearing a comment once about how annoying it was, to them, to have to hear this gratingly jubilant fake enthusiasm (usually hokey hyped-up pop groups like Black Eyed Peas, Destiny’s Child, Ashlee Simpson, Hillary Duff, etc.) blasting out of the “Muzak” systems virtually everywhere they went. To them this cheerleader-type assault was really only effective if you didn’t actually have any real psychic stress…And they felt that it was, surprisingly, helpful to them to try to understand their fears and their sadness - as opposed to pretending that it’s “all good.” And, you see, this is true insight… finally we know it’s okay to have a troubled mind, it’s okay to fail…
And so this song (which was written in the car on the way up to New York from Oklahoma while I drove and Steven played battery powered keyboard and computer) is about a young girl whose best friend has died, and everywhere she goes (like the friends I mentioned earlier) she must endure the empty optimism of the inexperienced. She wants to know, since it has arrived, what is despair, what is hope, what is failure…And what is in the darkness??
The line in the song, “so go tell Britney and go tell Gwen” is obviously a reference back to my friends and their Muzak incident…meaning, “Yeah, go tell Britney Spears and Gwen Stefani that their energy and their Prom Queen smiles only go to prove that they don’t empathize with my sadness.” I believe, in the song, that Britney and Gwen could be thought of as this grieving girl’s less mature friends…and that she’s not trying to go against them, she just doesn’t want to pretend that she understands what she doesn’t really understand - what death is…what despair is…what existential fear is… She doesn’t know, but she’s starting to find out…”
I dig this musical conversation with other musicians. I also really like the idea that even shitty “Muzak” can inspire a very real onversation with one’s self, especially now, when music that means nothing follows us around so easily. TV ads, elevators, cars, bars, etc. But on top of all that understanding sits a big pile of confused, because I don’t understand what kind of failure the song is referring to. The failure to overcome a certain sadness? The failure to relate? The failure to live the kind of life that relates to music like Gwen and Britney’s? I’m not really sure, and perhaps a little of all three.
There’s a line in that song that goes, ‘So go tell Britney and go tell Gwen,’ and I guess part of what I’m railing against on that song is this preternaturally happy music sung by kids and written by 40-year-old Swedish men. And in between them there’s this void. I guess the worst offender is like the Black Eyed Peas or Destiny’s Child, where they’re going, ‘I’m a survivor, I’m gonna make it,’ and I’m like, ‘Well, you’re 20, what are you going to survive? Getting a bikini wax this weekend?’
So the song sort of plays all that against all these small triumphs of life. In this case, a girl who’s just lost a friend, and everywhere she goes, her friends are like, ‘Oh, it’s all good, girl!’ And she doesn’t want to dismiss them, but she wants to embrace these failures in life — even though she’s inexperienced, she’s trying to become experienced. And she goes into this void. It’s really courageous, actually. -Coyne
Heh. Well, maybe I was wrong about that whole ‘not really that intense’ part. Either way, all the songs are standard (in a good way) Flaming Lips tunes, and resonate more like Soft Bulletin than Pink Robots (also good) with me. Pre-order At War With the Mystics from Amazon.
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