The Soft Bulletin

Product Information

There’s probably a perception of The Flaming Lips that is probably like The Grateful Dead or Phish or a jam band or something. You know, that we take a song that you know that’s 20 minutes’ long and it becomes a 30-minute jam session. But we really don’t do that. I like it when Jimi Hendrix or Miles Davies does that but I don’t like it in particular for us. With a record like ‘The Soft Bulletin’, that’s not what the music is. We’re always very careful to do the music as well and as familiar as it can be. I know just by talking to people in the audience that they have some very powerful connections to these songs. I’m always aware of that with songs from ‘The Soft Bulletin’.” Coyne may well be right. Certainly, the studio collaboration plays a vital role in The Soft Bulletin’s sound and without the success of Deserter’s Songs perhaps there would’ve been less momentum for the Lips to ride on. That said, The Soft Bulletin is also the better album. Deserter’s Songs, whilst great, isn’t able to reach the transcendent heights of its peaks as consistently as the Lips’ album and the tendency for the instrumentals to slip into Disney-esque cheese is more prevalent on the Mercury Rev record. It’s unfair but inevitable that Deserter’s Songs will spend the rest of its existence being undermined by a stronger album that came out eight months later. Which isn’t a reflection on Mercury Rev’s faults so much as it’s a testament to how incredible The Soft Bulletin is.

Masley, Ed (December 31, 1999). "The Best of 1999/Pop CDs". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Archived from the original on March 9, 2012 . Retrieved November 6, 2021. Part of the thing with The Flaming Lips and the strings, the horns, the timpani – there’s a certain authentic drama about it. Though we were using the most modern synthesizers and digital junk that you could get at the time, we were trying to make it sound like it wasn’t a band any more. We wanted it be more of an emotional sound than a band. I think those things we did on ‘Zaireeka’ freed us from being a band.” Did that just happen or did you have a very ‘anti-band’ attitude?Christgau, Robert (February 1, 2000). "Happy You Near". The Village Voice . Retrieved June 30, 2009. It’s unfair but inevitable that Deserter’s Songs will spend the rest of its existence being undermined by a stronger album that came out eight months later. – Nathan Brooks It’s an album you return to and hear differently as your own life moves forward and endings of every kind become all too real, a reminder that this flash of now is all we will ever have.” No, not really. I think people will point it out and go, ‘Oh there’s Tame Impala or MGMT’ but really to us it was the other way around. We loved their music before they even knew who we were. If someone compares Tame Impala or MGMT to us then that’s great. I think they make great and original, crazy music. I’m glad that people would put us in that category, but I don’t think that Steven and I would ever think of it in that way.”

That’s a real thing. We used the words ‘soft’ and bullet’ and ‘in’. It’s like part of you is being executed by something that doesn’t hurt you like a real bullet. It’s a soft bullet. ‘The Soft Bulletin’ is giving you this gentle message. That’s why I say it’s for sensitive people. I think for a lot of people it doesn’t matter that much. Your mind can be filled with other things, but if you’re an innocent person and your mind has that deep connection to love, beauty and family, then you have a lot to lose. You may lose yourself. You may be so devastated by your love for it that you don’t want to live. Somewhere in there ‘The Soft Bulletin’ was just saying, ‘I know, I know what you mean’. That’s enough. There’s a Daniel Johnston song that goes ‘To understand and be understood’. There’s something in there that let’s you go to the next day.” Only now. I don’t think we would have liked that in the beginning. I don’t think we could have made the album if we thought that was going to happen. We’re not those young, innocent guys getting ready to make that transition that ‘The Soft Bulletin’ was about.” But you see it for what it is now?

Release

Hoskyns, Barney (July 1999). "The Flaming Lips: The Soft Bulletin". Spin. 15 (7): 126–27 . Retrieved May 14, 2015. Terich, Jeff (July 2, 2015). "10 Essential Neo-Psychedelia Albums". Treble . Retrieved November 6, 2021.

Every song on The Soft Bulletin feels like a journey, both sonically and emotionally and it would take far too long describing why each and every one of them is so great. – Nathan Brooks The record is saying, ‘You’ve got to love life as much as you can, and if something tears some of that away from you then that’s ‘The Soft Bulletin’. It’s ‘Oh no’. If you live, you love and you absolutely throw yourself into it then what if it dies? What choice do we have? Do we live half a life because we don’t want to get hurt so much? Do we love half a love because if might lose it?” So the bad is ultimately worth it for the good? There wasn’t a fear of failure, we just had to be sure that we wanted to make it.” – Wayne Coyne So the live shows just became more instinctual?

Year End Lists

As it gets closer, I think we probably will. I don’t know if it has the same emotional power as ‘The Soft Bulletin’, but we’ve played ‘Do You Realize??’ and some of those songs every night since they came out so those songs are always with us. Some it is weird stuff that we’ve never played. But I think so. We like it where we’re not doing ‘the big overview’ of The Flaming Lips’ festival set and it feels different from last night.” For ‘The Soft Bulletin’ shows, will you be reimagining the songs? During this tense period, when The Flaming Lips weren’t sure what would come next, Coyne, Drozd, and bassist Michael Ivins experimented. Working informally in Oklahoma City, they began filling cassette tapes with strange music — fragments of songs, sound effects, drones — and constructed events in parking garages where the tapes would be played in car stereos of a few dozen volunteers and then the concrete structure would be transformed into a collective art installation. Out of these happenings, they began to develop an idea of what the next phase of The Flaming Lips might sound like. Absent Jones’ irreplaceable guitar, they would think in terms of arrangements, shifting the focus of their songs to keyboards, strings, and horns. Robert Dimery; Michael Lydon (March 23, 2010). 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: Revised and Updated Edition. Universe. ISBN 978-0-7893-2074-2. Since late 2010, the album has been sporadically performed live in its entirety over the years, and on May 26, 2016, an orchestra was used to embellish sounds of the album while the band played their main instruments for the album at the concert. [28] You’ve got these anniversary shows coming up. Do you feel as if you might do this for ‘Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots’ or your other album?