The Flaming Lips Release the Surreal New Album ‘Oczy Mlody:’ Stream it Now!
The Flaming Lips have released their latest album, Oczy Mlody. It’s the first time the band has a recorded a full-length, studio album of original Lips-only material since 2013’s The Terror. In 2014, they recreated The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band with a little help from their friends Miley Cyrus, Tegan and Sara, My Morning Jacket, Dr. Dog and many more. In 2015 the Lips collaborated once again with close friend and Disney star turned pop star turned Happy Hippie Miley Cyrus. The singer and the Lips called themselves Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz and released an experimental album of the same name. Cyrus has returned to lend her vocals to Oczy Mlody’s closing track, “We a Famly.”
Since The Flaming Lips’ inception in 1983, they have never shied away from being downright weird, and it’s resulted in decades of brilliant, wacky music. I think it’s safe to say that the Lips’ are psychedelic icons. Oczy Mlody proves that the band hasn’t lost an ounce of the experimental and imaginative elements of their music that have always been such an essential part of their unique identity.
The Flaming Lips have an incredible ability to conjure up vivid imagery of fantastic scenarios in listeners’ minds. They are storytellers as much as they are musicians. Throughout Oczy Mlody, my mind’s eye runs wild with images of battles among extraterrestrial soldiers and spies, kingdoms in the clouds, happy sprites, evil wizards, Mars, the Athenian woodlands of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and lazers… definitely lazers.
Frontman Wayne Coyne has spoken about the band’s concept of what Oczy Mlody is, and it is as bizarre and extraordinary as one could hope. Coyne explains that the term refers to a fictional, futuristic party drug that makes the user sleep for three months. Users of the drug are over-indulgent, unstable rich people. They have sex while riding unicorns and live out their childhood fantasies.
According to the lyrics of “There Should be Unicorns,” the imaginary rich party folk know exactly what to do when the cops show up to bust their Oczy Mlody-fueled parties: “And if the police show up, we’ll give them so much money, it will make them cry and forgive us.” The plan to combat the fictional police evolves throughout the song, later deciding the best course of action would be to “bribe them into helping us steal the light of love from the rainbow sluts that live next door.”
The first half of the album is demonstrative of the slower, ethereal side of The Flaming Lips. The opening song and title track is an instrumental that sets up the entire mood of the album. It evokes curiosity from start to finish until finally bleeding effortlessly into the first lyrical track “How??,” a song that has a demand to make. “Legalize it, every drug right now,” sings Coyne, Oczy Mlody included, we presume.
The album begins to take a turn once we reach “Nigdy Nie (Never No).” Tribal drums sounds that will reappear later are introduced. Bursts of electronic noise sound like staticky claps of thunder. And then there’s “Galaxy I Sink,” a song that is basically what cowboys vs. aliens would actually sound like. Take a listen and see if you can picture anything but the old American west, with the addition of aliens and ray-guns, of course. The track is nothing short of beautiful, especially towards the middle when an overwhelming rush of string instrumentation changes up the whole vibe of the album for a moment. It is at this point that Oczy Mlody grows stronger.
The next track is where my uncontrollable urge to move really starts to kick in. It feels as if the creation of a new genre is necessary to describe “One Night While Hunting for Faeries and Witches and Wizards to Kill.” Electro-tribal perhaps? Amazonian-dance-psychedelia might cover it. Whatever you want to call it, this song is going to be a blast to hear live.
As the end of the album draws near, we come to “The Castle,” which was first released a few months ago. Wayne Coyne took to Facebook live to discuss the track and the music video in October. Check out that clip here. Sweet and dreamy, “The Castle” is one of the less complicated songs on Oczy Mlody. It is probably the track that will draw in those who may not know the Lips as well, and it is unlikely to be absent from any of the setlists on their upcoming tour.
Oczy Mlody is so many things. It’s psychedelic, experimental, spacey, surrealist, science fictional… and it is quintessentially Flaming Lips. Pick up your copy here or stream below. The band kicks off their 2017 tour in London on January 21st. Check out a list of dates below and click here for tickets.
January 21 London, UK – O2 Brixton
January 22 Manchester, UK – Manchester Academy
January 24 Berlin, DE – Columbiahalle
January 25 Copenhagen, DK – Vega
January 26 Stockholm, SE – Munchen Brewery
January 28 Utrecht, NL – Tivoli
January 30 Milan, IT – Alcatraz
January 31 Zurich, CH – Volkshaus
February 02 Paris, FR – Le Bataclan
February 3 Antwerp, BE – De Roma
March 3 Boston, MA – House of Blues
March 4 Philadelphia, PA – The Fillmore
March 5 Washington, DC – 9:30 Club
March 6 Washington, DC – 9:30 Club
March 8 New Haven, CT – College Street Music Hall
March 9 New York, NY – Terminal 5
March 11 Westbury, NY – Westbury Theater
March 13 Toronto, ON – Rebel Complex
March 14 Detroit, MI – Royal Oak Music Theater
March 29 Nashville, TN – War Memorial Auditorium
March 30 Charlotte, NC – The Fillmore
March 31 Raleigh, NC – The Ritz
April 2 Atlanta, GA – Tabernacle
April 3 Lake Buena Vista, FL – House of Blues
April 4 St. Petersburg, FL – Jannus Live
April 17 Chicago, IL – Riviera Theatre
April 19 Grand Rapids, MI – 20 Monroe Live
April 21 Madison, WI – Orpheum Theater
April 22 Des Moines, IA – Hoyt Sherman Place
April 23 St. Louis, MO – The Pageant
April 30 Vilanova I la Geltrú, ES – Vida Festival