College Times

Media Credit: J Michelle Martin-Coyne

For a band that’s built a long, wildly-successful career on being weird – “SpongeBob and Patrick Confront the Psychic Wall of Energy,” anyone? – who could’ve guessed that The Flaming Lips’ most peculiar work wouldn’t see lead man Wayne Coyne even open his mouth?

Or at least not to sing. Presumably, Coyne and company opened their mouths to ingest a copious array of consciousness-expanders whilst composing the soundtrack to Christmas on Mars, a film in which the band’s members portray Mars colonists planning a Christmas pageant to celebrate the birth of the colony’s first artificially-created baby. Yeah, that sounds about right. With this background information firmly planted, the album is actually pretty spot-on: an instrumental mind-fuck built on haunting psychadelia a world away.

It all flows together like bong water: the rumbling distortion of the opening “One Beyond Hopelessness” rolling into the tinkling nervousness of “The Distance Between Mars and Earth” morphing into the screeching, orchestral wall of “The Horrors of Isolation: The Celestial Dissolve, Triumphant Hallucination, Light Being Absorbed.”

It’s alternatingly creepy, playful, mechanical and organic; but unless you’re on acid (or really a Martian), it’s probably a little too tripped out for your average leisurely listen.

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