flaming lips
clouds taste metallic

Warner Bros, 1995

Look past the horrible orange blazoned across the album cover. Thank god the music isn’t anywhere near as dated as the artwork. Once you get past that, and actually listen to the album, you’ll have to make just as much effort again to actually get into this album. When I first bought this album, working my way backwards from The Soft Bulletin (ignoring for now Zaireeka) through the Flaming Lips catalogue, I gave this album a couple of uninspired listens, before grunting and placing it back in my CD rack.

Fast forward, a good six months later. Looking for something to listen to, I flicked through my CD rack. A ghastly orange cover stood out. I thought I’d give it another crack. And ever since that listen, Clouds Taste Metallic has been one of my undisputed favourite albums.

For those that don’t know know much about the Flaming Lips, they are an Oklahoma band who originally formed back in 1983. Despite a number of personnel changes over the years, the two constant members have been frontman Wayne Coyne and bassist Michael Ivins.

Their sound has continually changed and evolved over the years; running the gamut from noisy punk, to orchestrated pop, to electronic rock. Throughout the bands career, the desire to experiment and entertain listeners has always been paramount.

Clouds Taste Metallic was released two years after Transmissions From the Satellite Heart, which featured their near-breakthrough MTV hit, She Don’t Use Jelly. Despite being a critical success, and the favourite album of many fans, Clouds Taste Metallic was never the commercial success that many had hoped for. This is a shame, because looking back the album was undoubtedly one of the very best albums released in the 90s, period.

The album kicks off with The Abandoned Hospital Ship, crackling through the sound of an old film projector. The lyrics nicely encapsulate what to expect throughout the rest of the album – a heady mix of psychedelia, science fiction, and general dramatics. But it’s when Ronald Jones enters the fray with that riff that we really get a sneak peak at what we’re into here, as the song explodes into a fuzzed-out conclusion ringing with resplendent bells.

What follows is a near perfect collection of freakshow psychedelic pop songs.

After a fantastic and brooding intro almost a minute long, Psychiatric Exploration of the Fetus With Needles explodes into life, with some of Wayne Coyne’s craziest lyrics. This song features some of the most insane guitar noises Ronald Jones ever managed – perhaps he’s attacking his guitar with a dentist drill?

Coyne’s questions in Placebo Headwound, such as “where does outer space end?” & “if god hears all my questions/how come there’s never an answer?“, would surely come across as corny and typical stoner stuff, if only he didn’t sound so genuinely sincere (with a childlike naivety).

This Here Giraffe returns to oddball lyrics, but the real focus of this song is the simple bouncy bass line the song is crafted around – this makes it probably the most instantly likeable track on the album.

Brainville gets back to a more serious – if not particuarly sane – note, with its story of a place where you can get your brain enlarged. This story possibly segues into Guy Who Got a Headache and Accidentally Saved the World – the title itself sums it up better than I ever could.

After all this insanity, the Lips throw a massive curve ball with the gorgeous love song When You Smile – quieter and more personal than the prior tracks, it still feels right at home.

Just in case that had you nodding off – Kim’s Watermelon Gun hits you with a jolt. More weird lyrics (“Kim’s got her watermelon gun/it’s the consciousness of love“), loud guitars, and huge choruses.

Possibly my personal favourite track on the album, They Punctured My Yolk, is an epic space drama, featuring over-the-top vocal arrangements. The story of astronauts in love who are separated when the narrator misses take off – “Goodbye, goodbye, look as the clouds burst/they’re growing taller/as your ship leaves in the distance/my world gets smaller” – could be the soundtrack to a tripped-out futuristic episode of Days of Our Lives.

Lightning Strikes the Postman is a return to a crunchy guitar driven pop song, and cleverly and humourously appears to chronicle the kind of excuses many of us come up with for not keeping in touch with people – the excuse being that I did write you, but the poor postie was burnt to a cinder in outrageous fashion! “I sent you a postcard, and I hope you’re fine / but lightning strikes the postman all the time”. Better than the age old excuse of it simply getting lost in the mail! In a perfect world this would be on pop radio stations every day.

The album then quietens down a notch, with the charming Christmas at the Zoo – the Flips again weave a wonderfully vivid story in a simple song. In this instance, our subject decides that his good deed this Christmas will be to free all the animals from the zoo, but there’s one hitch – the animals don’t actually want to be freed, as they’d prefer to save themselves! Again, in a perfect world, this would feature on any tacky annual Christmas music compilation.

Evil Will Prevail is the “official” final track on the album, and – as only the Flaming Lips can really do – manages to make the title of the song an “optimistic” premise. A quieter and more relaxed tune than many preceding it, it still manages to reach a bombastic finale.

The album closes with the “bonus track” Bad Days, which acts as an entirely suitable “encore” for the album proper. Thanks to the band’s contract with Warners, they managed to get this song on the Batman soundtrack alongside U2, Brandy, and Seal. On Clouds Taste Metallic, it serves as the ideal fun closing song for the album.

Clouds Taste Metallic was effectively the groups final guitar-driven rock album, and saw guitar maestro Ronald Jones leave the band after only two albums. This album was a culmination of all that came before, and almost a “signing off” before they embarked on their more ambitious parking lot experiments, Zaireeka, and the Soft Bulletin. Whilst the Soft Bulletin garnered the adulation of critics worldwide, and the group finally added to their mainstream success with Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots and At War with the Mystics, for many of their fans Clouds Taste Metallic is the creative pinnacle of their career, and an album that truly rewards the listener with repeated listens.