Album Review: The Flaming Lips – The Soft Bulletin Live At Red Rocks


Soft Bulletin Live At Red Rocks




Pretty much everyone knows the background to The Soft Bulletin now, that its effectively unexpected success saved The Flaming Lips from being thrown to the lions of fate after prodigiously talented guitarist Ronald Jones quit, and how they responded by trying to redefine how music was made with weird, suit-frightening results.

The recording process was one in which Wayne Coyne and co. progressively surprised themselves, but even now recalling the sheer scale and audacity of such a total reinvention brings a smile to the face. Two decades on the album lauded as one of the nineties’ greatest remains a soaring flight of fantasy without which a singular voice may well have ended up lost to Oklahoma’s dive bars.

In Lipsville, it also made complete sense to mess with their own legacy by giving The Soft Bulletin’s original vivid tones the orchestration and full choral upcycling it deserved in the first place but the shoestring budget couldn’t afford. Challenge accepted, why not also then, just to up the ante one more notch, play the whole thing live at an outdoor amphitheatre, up a mountain?

It’s the sort of gamble that has worked out just fine for Coyne over the last twenty years, and true to form the ensemble managed to cradle the original’s warmth and fragility, adding what the singer has described as more ‘density’ in the process. At times some of the reworkings elevate what’s regarded as the Pet Sounds of its era towards their destiny: the grand sweep of opener Race For The Prize is wonderfully uplifting, while A Spoonful Weighs A Ton’s cosmic odyssey matches Coyne’s tremulous vocal to a soaring chorus line.

There are perceptive tricks too, not least of which is keeping the crowd noise – especially when they’re required to join in on Buggin’ – pasted very much in mix, whilst any general temptation to touch up blemishes is resisted. Experienced in sound, only all of the visual pageantry is inevitably lost but there are stellar versions of songs which remain pristine: the world is still patiently Waitin’ For A Superman, the backstory to the Spiderbite Song fails to dim the affection between Coyne and the afflicted Stephen Drozd, while Feeling Yourself Disintegrate has lost no poignancy.

The most Lips thing about this record however is not the gnarly high concept but that it took three and a half years for it to appear, delayed by processes which are best left guessed at. A worthy reminder and a lavishly enhanced reboot, be in no doubt this is a product in its own right, not a by-the-numbers hashing driven by sentiment and contract obligations.

If The Soft Bulletin hasn’t beamed you up into its fantasia before now, there’s no longer an excuse to keep things that way.

7.5/10

Andy Peterson


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