NEWS: Flaming Lips: New Movie, New Album, New Direction

Spacey swooner Wayne Coyne has shot his load and giving information on the The Flaming Lips’ two biggest projects to date.

Talking to BBC 6 Music on Saturday (July 12) and in typical fantastical style Coyne gave details of the band’s new album, its disparate influences and the imminent release of their long-awaited feature film.

“Some of it sounds like John Lennon, but if he got together with Miles Davis and they went back in time, but there was a supercomputer that they could figure out how to work!”

We’ve done a couple of songs, but we have a handful of other songs that I know have a good vibe to them. We’ve been wanting to do it for a while, but we’ve been trying to find the right combination of song and mood. But I think we’ll get there.”

On top of all this activity the first ever full-length Flaming Lips feature film, Christmas On Mars, is in the can. Seven years in the making it looks set for a DVD release toward the end of the year:

“We never knew when we were gonna release the movie for sure. We started making it in 2001, but we always knew were gonna release the Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots album [2002] before that came out.

“But then after Yoshimi came out, we never got to go home again. So luckily we were interrupted by popularity – or whatever you want to call it. And luckily we were able to get back to it and I think it’s better now that we didn’t finish it that early because computers, technology, skill level, bravery and all those things, just changed for us. I think we’re able to do something a lot more interesting, a lot more emotional and a lot more weird. It’s just been made better because it took us so long.”

The film’s plot is perhaps as randomly psychedelic as the band’s multi-layered lunacy hints at.

“There’s an abandoned space station on Mars, where there’s a baby being born that happens to be coinciding with Christmas - the baby’s accidentally being born on Christmas Eve,” explains Coyne.

“There’s a major disaster, the oxygen generator breaks, they don’t know if the baby’s gonna survive, but my character [a green-faced Martian] shows up and through some magical thinking, some great things happens.”

For more Flaming Lips craziness check out the video to the band’s 2006 single ‘The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song (With All Your Power)’ below:

This news story can be found on the Quietus with other pieces by Dean Samways.

Words: Dean Samways

Image: the Quietus

NEWS: My Morning Jacket Begin Writing New Album

Reverb royalty My Morning Jacket have already put their creative caps on and begun work on their next album.

It was only last month when the band’s latest LP, Evil Urges, was released, but frontman Jim James today gave details of plans afoot for the next full-length release.

Talking to BBC 6 Music James said: “I’m already writing songs for the new record and stuff. The process is weird because whenever we make a record, the songs come from one or two years of life that you’ve lived.

"Then by the time you get to make that record you’re in that zone but when it comes out, it’s a year or two later. So, for me personally, I’m working on the next thing."

Despite all the media love for ‘Evil Urges’ the guitarist has said that he’s tried to avoid reading the reviews.

“I guess as a band you try to not hear too much of what people say because it feels good when somebody says something good but it feels bad when someone says something bad.”

“We’ve had a lot of people say some nice things about it and some that haven’t liked it so I feel like we’re always kinda in the middle. But we’re really happy with it.”

Watch the video to ‘I’m Amazed’ from Evil Urges below:

This news story can be found on the Quietus with other pieces by Dean Samways.

Words: Dean Samways

Image: the Quietus