|
| Clouds Taste Metallic | 
 enlarge | Artist: Flaming Lips
Label: Warner
Category: Music
List Price: £9.99
Buy Used: £2.55
You Save: £7.44 (74%)
New (46) from £2.98
Avg. Customer Rating:  14 reviews
Sales Rank: 6842
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 5.6 x 5 x 0.5
MPN: 45911
UPC: 093624591122
EAN: 0093624591122
ASIN: B000002MYC
Release Date: September 25, 1995
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: Orders Placed Before 5pm Will Be Shipped Same Day.
|
| Tracks:
| • | Abandoned Hospital Ship | | • | Placebo Headwound | | • | Brainville | | • | When You Smile | | • | Guy Who Got A Headache And Accidentally Saves | | • | Bad Days | | • | Evil Will Prevail | | • | Christmas At The Zoo | | • | Lightning Strikes The Postman | | • | They Punchured My Yolk | | • | Kim's Watermelon Gun | | • | This Here Giraffe | | • | Psychiatric Explorations Of The Fetus With Needles |
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.co.uk Review
The great thing about Flaming Lips' records is that each new one renders all its predecessors obsolete. Clouds Taste Metallic continues the fine Lips tradition of quantum improvement. It's an elaborately orchestrated masterwork of crashing cymbals, chiming bells, tinkling pianos, buzzing guitars, chirping birds, humming projectors, exploding cities, cheering crowds, and vocals stacked to the stratosphere. Each song goes gleefully over the top, but every ridiculous element somehow seems just right. While the carnival atmosphere and silly song titles distract you from band leader Wayne Coyne's serious ambition, the album's power bubbles up from hidden depths and eventually overwhelms you. The smoldering packages in "Lightning Strikes the Postman" and the sleeping millions dreaming about killing the boss in "Bad Days" are funny, but they're also unnerving, and the band builds a whole song out of the sad truth that "Evil Will Prevail". The sense that this isn't all just fun and games makes happier moments such as the cosmic orgasm of "When You Smile" sound like something much more than a hippie's wet dream. This album isn't music to take drugs to; it's the drug itself. --Tim Quirk
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 9 more reviews...
 Twisted pop masterwork from the always brilliant Flaming Lips. January 10, 2008
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
By this stage in their career, The Lips had progressed from the lo-fi psychedelic slacker rock of early albums like Oh My Gawd! and In a Priest Driven Ambulance, into something of a loose pop band. 1991's major label debut, Hit to Death in the Future Head, and it's follow up, 1993's almost successful Transmissions from the Satellite Heart had seen the arrival of producer Dave Fridmann, as well as the on-going bombardment of revolving-door band members - incorporating early input from both Nathan Roberts and Jonathan Donahue - through to the more stable pairing of founding members Wayne Coyne and Michael Ivins, alongside their soon-to-become long-term collaborator Steven Drozd, and the introverted guitar wiz Ronald Jones. This line up would go on to create Transmissions from the Satellite Heart, and this, the twisted pop masterwork that is, Clouds Taste Metallic.
The most astounding thing about the album, for me at least, is the way in which everything just seems to work towards creating a unified whole; from the song titles and the subject matter (obsessions with space travel, science, superheroes, robots, love and death; which would all continue on the more successful albums to follow) to the overall use of instrumentation. Here, Coyne uses the acoustic guitar to flesh out the melody on a number of songs - which gives the album an individuality within the context of their discography - whilst Drozd and Fridmann add keyboards, distortion and all manner of bizarre little instrumental flourishes (including the sculpting of Jones's angular and distorted guitar riffs into a wave of atonal orchestration) to add atmosphere and counter melodies to really compliment the songs in a structural sense. Placebo Headwound, Kim's Watermelon Gun and Lightening Strikes the Postman do the whole surreal pop thing better than The Pixies ever did - with The Lips firing on all creative cylinders - with a great sense of rhythm and percussion, some wonderful production effects and Coyne's little-boy-lost vocals all adding to the overall pop quality of the songs as a whole.
Tracks like When You Smile, Kim's Watermelon Gun and Christmas at the Zoo seem more like children's songs run through the art pop blender, with Coyne singing of innocence and love in a world of uncertainty, as the band keep the whole insane pop vibe spinning to infinity, with Jones making some extraordinary noises with his guitar, Ivins keeping the bass work subtle (and even adding the odd stab of piano) and Drozd offering up some astounding drum fills (the ace rhythm section of Ivins and Drozd really gelling on songs like the aforementioned This Here Giraffe, Psychiatric Explorations of the Fetus with Needles and one of my favourites of favourites, They Punctured My Yolk). Here, Coyne sings about rejection and redemption against the context of an ill-fated space mission, the bizarre descriptions coming close to poetry ("good bye, good bye / look as the clouds burst / they're growing taller / as your ship leaves in the distance / my world gets smaller"). Only Coyne could write a track about spacemen and make it sound like a love song... though given the fact that he's spent the last ten years making a film in his garage called 'Christmas on Mars', he probably means it!! Either way, there's no denying the creative scope of the band at this stage in their career... managing to turn in a record that uses strong melodies alongside forward-thinking instrumentation to tell an outrageous story that really, when distilled to its most simplistic formula, is all about finding love and acceptance within a world of apathy and confusion.
From this point on, the whole album is just a veritable pop Mecca, taking on the notion of a Pet Sounds for amateurs and elaborating on it - as the band set about crafting a collection of teenage symphonies to a junkyard dog (preferably one still floating in space) - whilst all around them the notes and bending and distorting, the vocals are fracturing on the high notes and the whole thing seems in danger of falling apart at any given moment. The fact that it doesn't, the fact that the band end up creating a piece of work that somehow seems more pure and heartfelt than anything Brian Wilson could produce, is a testament to The Lips as a creative unit.
For me, Clouds Taste Metallic is the defining moment for The Flaming Lips thus far. The record in which the mad exploration of the limits of a recording studio merged with something approaching proper song craft, giving way to a purity of vision and an intuitive understanding of what makes great pop. It's a lot less clean and professional sounding than their later pop masterwork The Soft Bulletin, but somehow remains the more enduring of the two. The beguiling beauty of the closing songs, Evil Will Prevail and Bad Days, which somehow finds a middle ground between The Beach Boys and country music - as Coyne strums an acoustic guitar while insisting "all your bad days will end" - is really quite beautiful and rather moving; particularly following the over complicated parade of wild imagery that spiralled out of Coyne's mad, kaleidoscopic songbook, during the preceding twelve tracks. For me, this is one of the few recorded masterworks of the 1990's... the one that no one bothered to buy.
 Buy it for 3 awesome tracks.... January 2, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
...and those tracks are The Abandoned Hospital Ship, Psychiatric Explorations of the Fetus With Needles and the brilliant Kim's Watermelon Gun which is one of my all time favourite Flaming Lips songs.
downside to it though is you have to put up with Brainville, which is a awful song.
The Flaming Lips yet again prove why they are one of the great bands of our time! August 5, 2006
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
The Flaming Lips are band that are always embracing the weird and wonderful side of life and have a great time doing so as well as constantly evolving their off kilter space age rock sound. This album is no expectation to that. The title of this album "Clouds Taste Metallic" should make that apparent.
After a punishing tour schedule to help promote "Transmissions From The Satellite Heart" the band regrouped, and on the September 19, 1995, they released this album " Clouds Taste Metallic".
Clouds Taste Metallic, is a even more accessible album than "Transmissions From The Satellite Heart " yes it may be more a accessible sound however the band have done so without discarding the spacey, trippy and more often than not bonkers lyrics that typify The Flaming Lips.
The album has songs written by the band that no other band in a month of Sundays would ever have even thought about writing. Which is what sets this band apart form other bands. Just one example of a song that has some rather, unusual lyrics
Their wasn't any snow on Christmas eve and I knew what I
Should do, I thought I'd free the animals all locked up at the zoo
That is up their with some of weirdest pieces of inspired crazed genius ideas for a song, a entire song about freeing the animals form the zoo, not because of any cruel deeds that may be going on in their but due to that fact it that their was not going to be any snow on Christmas Eve. No doubt there is a deeper meaning to this song that merely freeing animals in the zoo, but isn't the face value of the song a lot more fun?
This album also continues the tradition of long and mad as brush song titles that the band give their songs, some of these titles are as good, if not as good as the songs themselves.
Psychiatric Exploration Of The Fetus With Needles...
Guy Who Got A Headache And Accidentally Saves The World
Lightning Strikes The Postman
But amid all the cartoonist that band surrounds them selves with on the majority of the songs. There are songs that show that band aren't all about singing about postman who get unfortunately struck down by lighting, or saving the world by getting a headache, there are songs on the album like "Placebo Head wound" which questions the existence of god but done so in the usual Wayne Conye way, simple but profound.
And if god hears all my questions
Well how come there's never an answer?
Is it nothin, nothin?
"Clouds Taste Metallic" takes the sprit of fun that ran through a lot of "Transmission From The Satellite Heart" retains it and builds on it without making a carbon copy of it A great album by one of the most constantly brilliant bands of out time. The Flaming Lips you cant help but love, especially when they make music as enjoyable as this.
Clouds taste metallic May 27, 2004
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Whilst thinking about the endless drivel that seems to be forever in the charts, I searched for an escape and this album is it. Its brilliant, the lips seem to have a track that aspirers to every mood you find yourself in. With some superb and clever lyrics and varied musical ideas and textures you cannot stop playing this album. I am a relativly new fan of the lips unique sound, but now consider myself an ardent fan. This is a good album for animal lovers too, with tracks such as This here giraffe and Christmas at the zoo. These are a couple of examples of their explorational music ideas and there talent to convert to music scores. Other tracks such as brainville (aptly named) and placebo headwound give you thoughts and ideas of your own form many different sides. This on top of immense talent to play and produce their unique sounds make this albums one of my favourites. This album is excellent the band are talented and there music interesting and fun. But don't start a comparison with radiohead; you'll wind up very disturbed.
Pure bliss December 21, 2003
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
Coming close to ten years old and it still hasn't lost any of it's appeal. So original and so complete. Not even radiohead or mercury rev are this far forward with music so bow down and worship the greatest record ever.
|
|
|
Learn how to have your own
Amazon Shop
Travel Maps and Guides
zeugma
| | Holiday Travel |
alpharooms.com for cheap holiday deals in spain and worldwide
Disneyland Paris for a great family holiday or short break.
Holday Cottages throughout Scotland, England, Wales, Ireland and France with Cottages4you
Hilton - need we say more, you will find Hilton Hotels in most areas throughout Britain, in cities and in the countryside.
Don't forget Travel Insurance
Airport Parking
|
|
|
|
