THE FLAMING LIPS The Soft Bulletin (Warner Bros)

This LP has been greeted ecstatically by the UK press, almost without exception, but I’m not sure that it’s quite the album of the year material that some are suggesting. Which isn’t to say that this isn’t a good album - it’s a very good one indeed - but classic? I’m not sure.

My introduction to the band came via their support on the Mercury Rev tour in May, and it was "intriguing" if my memory serves me well. The LP was therefore shifted onto the "To Buy" list. And I’m glad it was.

The sound of the LP is actually very similar to the live sound, not surprising since the live 3 piece could hardly expect to even approximate the grandeur of this record without some assistance. For the record, the tracks played live from the LP were "Race for The Prize", "What Is The Light?/The Observer", "Waitin’ For A Superman" and "Feeling Yourself Disintegrate". A fair chunk of this LP was therefore familiar to me, although an initial fear was that these songs comprised the less distinctive section of the live set.

It’s not your typical indie guitar type album, as the sounds are more ambitious than guitars, bass and drums. In addition this certainly isn’t necessarily an easy album to get into, which is surprising given that it is an album based on melody. The melodies are often a bit on the oblique side, but once they get into your brain, that’s it really - they’re squatting for good and won’t be shifted. Take "Superman" for example - the fact it’s one of the 3 additional remixes on the CD suggests that it’s an important track, but on first listen, it seems like one of the weakest tracks on the LP. Subsequent listens prove otherwise, as its plaintive melody works its way into your head as described above.

A "weakness" of the album therefore is that it occasionally appears to teeter on the brink of sameyness, but always pulls back at the brink. Put another way, there’s few obvious songs here - the UK Top 40 hitlet (#39 with a bullet!), "Race For The Prize", with its echoes of those euphoric bits New Order occasionally sneaked into the middle of their 12" mixes, is probably the only obvious track on the album. Given that Wayne Coyne has suggested that the Lips’ music has the potential to be heard next to Celine Dion, this is again surprising, but Dave Fridmann’s production is resolutely "indie" by which I mean it avoids the sweeping epic blandness of Dion, which I suppose could have been applied to some of the songs on this record. This IS a good thing., although in the next-to-Celine-stakes, the Lips have still a way to go.

Otherwise the pacing of the a lbum is different from your average indie album - there’s no rockers here and a lot of the songs are in that middle paced zone, so instead the differences have to be more about how the songs sound. The heartbeat of "What Is The Light?", segueing into the instrumental "The Observer", contrasts with the military drum vocal of "Feeling Yourself Disintegrate". There’s tons of invention too in tracks like "The Spark That Bled" and "A Spoonful Weighs A Ton".

In truth the remixes of "Prize" and "Superman" add very little to the record, but "Buggin", the final remix is a ridiculously simple pop song (and it’s also included on the Austin Powers soundtrack fact fans). It raises the possibility of the Lips as the masters of the throwaway pop song.

To conclude therefore the thrills here are not cheap in anyway, as this a great album which rewards repeated listens.

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