Flaming Lips vs Mercury Rev

Just want to quickly defend post-Soft Bulletin Flaming Lips.

  • Yoshimi is still a 10/10 for me and I think a lot of the recent criticism doesn’t really stem from the album itself but from people’s negative perceptions of Wayne these past few years being applied retroactively.
  • At War With the Mystics is one of those cases where a band moves in an unpopular direction but still makes something great. My Cosmic Autumn Rebellion in particular is amazing and one of their very best.
  • The only real fault I have with Embryonic is that I wish they had let loose and rip a few more times, like on See the Leaves or Worm Mountain. It’s a really interesting album with a handful of knockout moments.
  • The Terror is one of the best albums of 2013 and just as good as, if not better than, some of the consensus golden year albums. There’s absolutely no whimsey on it - it’s pure bleak misery but the kind you want to listen to. The title track and Butterfly How Long It Takes To Die especially are up there among their best songs.

Oczy Mlody is the only time they sort of missed for me, but I still think there’s a salvageable album there beneath the whimsey.

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We had Do You Realize? as our processional song at our wedding. Bit of a controversial choice amongst our guests but I’m still willing to defend it.

I really like both bands and although Wayne Coyne hasn’t aged amazingly (and their live show hasn’t changed much in 20 years) I’ll give my vote to The Flaming Lips

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Mercury Rev all day long.
Flaming Lips are a great spectacle, and I love them, but the Rev have always had a special place in my heart. I bought Yerself Is Steam when it came out (on blue vinyl - prettiness 10/10, audio quality 0/10) and saw them open the day at Reading 91 (think it was their third ever gig?) and still love them now (not so much the Delta Sweete album, admittedly). Their Portsmouth Wedgewood Rooms show on the DS tour is one of the best gigs I’ve ever been to (after a superb gig I was waiting for the encore thinking Jesus, where can they go from here? and they came back out and tore through Cortez The Killer), and they’ve been great every subsequent time I’ve seen them. Further to the Bandcamp comment above, get the (I think) SXSW show from 1999 - I had it on a promo disc from the Vital rep (remember them?) way back when, and it’s incredible. You will spontaneously levitate during Car Wash Hair.

Mercury Rev all the way. I even have a framed poster from their recentish orchestral gigs in pride of place above the fireplace in the front room.

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They’re two different bands? Jks lol.

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Bad Days Is great whenever you’re having a bad day at work.

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only really heard Soft Bulletin through to At War With The Mystics tbh

Both bands I loved to death as a teenager. Both bands I couldn’t be arsed to listen to anything new by anymore even though I could easily do so with a device I carry in my pocket.

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Needs a “dead heat” option

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Holy shit!! That Brixton ‘92 show is phenomenal!!

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It’s odd - I can completely understand why you and other folx defend these albums (I don’t despise them by any means) but they still leave me lukewarm/cold/uninterested for various reasons:

Yoshimi: I loved it at the time, but it’s not proved itself a keeper longevity-wise (nothing to do with Wayne’s dickiness either, I should add). It’s more that there aren’t really that many songs there when I compare it to their early-mid 90s output - Fight Test is great, but knowing it’s a straight Cat Stevens ripoff isn’t exactly charming; Yoshimi itself is fun but ultimately slight, and only Hypnotist??? jumps out at me from the otherwise mid-tempo introspective moroseness. OK, there’s DYR???, but after too many many indie weddings I’ve been to (played as part of the ceremony twice, always at the reception) other general celebrations and some horribly painful loss and grief endured these last two years, I’d really rather never hear the fucking thing again. Yes Wayne, I do realise, but you’re not fucking helping, so please shut up.

Mystics: Even at the time, this felt like Yoshimi Part II but with all the fun, playfulness and subtlety (relatively speaking) sucked out of it. If the consensus sez the only truly great songs here are WAND and Pompeii, than I’m happy to side with the consensus (and it ain’t exactly thrilling that the best song on the album is an instrumental Pink Floyd did better three decades earlier…)

Edit - seeing them live in 2006 only made my irritation at this album (and the Lips in general) worse because it was essentially the same fucking gig as I’d seen four years earlier, just with a smattering of new songs thrown in here and there. It was a good show when it was a show, but Wayne was at at his “interminably dull and rambling monologues to the crowd” worst, so much so that the biggest Lips/Wayne fanboy in my life was actively trying not to shout out “SHUT THE FUCK UP AND PLAY SOME FUCKING MUSIC!”

Embryonic - I really should like this album (given it’s when they got properly weird again) yet for some reason I find it irredeemably dull throughout its interminable 70 minute runtime. Where are the songs? The 90s Lips hung bonkers music on hooks big enough to catch sharks; this album is the ultimate example of aimless noodling for the sake of noodling. It might be one of the worst things they ever did.

The Terror - I’ve not listened to this in years, but I genuinely enjoyed it when it came out and I reckon I’d enjoy a re-listen (I will do so tomorrow when I get home tomorrow). It felt like a reset button on their career, and whilst it was sparse and spare and quite harrowing at times, I got what they were trying to do.

Oczy Mlody - Nothing good to say about this whatsoever, sorry.

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I think that’s the rub for me, the “songs” are just so good on their 90s output. And if the lyrics were ever morose, the tunes were so uplifting it didn’t matter.

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How come the secret migration isnt online anywhere? Maybe theyre ashamed of it.

The first track on it is brilliant though.

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You’ve failed to mention Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell, which is great.

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Think the Lips take it based on their run of albums from Priest Driven Ambulance to Clouds Taste Metallic. Struggle to think of many other bands that have put together a run that can compete with that (Outkast’s first four maybe?). Also, if I had to pick a favourite band, think it would probably be the Ronald Jones era Flaming Lips. Mercury Rev’s first two are both stone cold classics, but think the quality does drop off slightly after that.

The two “pastoral / Americana” albums that most of the world seem to think are both band’s masterworks, I’d take Deserter’s Songs over The Soft Bulletin every time (both are very good though, tbf. Just not really what I want from a Lips/Rev record). All Is Dream also absolutely buries Yoshimi.

Flaming Lips get extra credit for Telepathic Surgery and Zaireeka. There is also a Lips bootleg called The Day Andy Gibb Died which is a live set plus a bunch of rare stuff from the very early 90s that is the best bootleg I’ve ever heard.

Not assessing either band’s output post 2002, because why would you bother with any of this stuff when you could be listening to their 90s records.

Live, Mercury Rev would be in my top 3 gigs of all time (Newcastle Riverside in ’92) so edge this category. Also their first Peel Session is flat out amazing. Having said that, saw the Lips a bunch in the 90s and they were incredible every time.

In the ‘guitar noise’, Ronald Jones takes this hands down. Seeing him live is something else. In the ‘whimsy’ and ‘side’ project categories, agree with every word of the OP.

Lips overall then, but only just. Two of the very best bands going. Great thread too!

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LOL. This is like saying, “Neil Young is shite. Having said that, I haven’t listened to any of records from the 60s or 70s”.

The Flaming Lips are shite.

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TLDR - I like Deserters Songs.

When Oczy came out I made the effort to listen to all FL albums and without really knowing anything about the history of the band it was interesting to hear the pretty radically different phases of their output - but I don’t have any desire to listen to the old stuff again.

I think I’m pretty mainstream in my view of them - can’t be bothered with all the side projects; first heard them with Transmissions; Clouds/Bulletin/Yoshimi are great; hate Mystics; Embryonic great; Terror/Swords possibly my favourite things they’ve done. Oczy I don’t hate and maybe if they’d removed some of the whimsy it would be better, and for various reasons I actually listened to it a fair bit on release but nah it just feels like pastiche Lips at this point.

I get why people would be down on Yoshimi but it’s pretty incredible that an album like that broke through to the relative mainstream and I think if you can get past that it’s still pretty ace.

Mercury Rev are a weird one for me as I only ‘get’ Deserters Songs which is just a very special album to me for very personal reasons. I’ve tried numerous times to listen to their other stuff and it just doesn’t connect with me at all. So I totally understand that a lot of people think the other stuff is better it’s just for me Deserters is just an album that stands alone and apart from the band, just an album I love and is very special to me.

So yeah I really like half a dozen Lips albums (although I still have to be in a very specific and fairly rare mood to enjoy any of them) and although I really hate some of their stuff there’s also another set of albums that are fine. And I only like one MR album, but I’d taken that one album over anything by the Lips or indeed most other bands.

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Why do you all hate whimsy?