Free Radicals

Rolling Stone and Entertainment Weekly got it wrong, but MOJO and our local rock press got it RIGHT: At War With The Mystics is an amazing album, and The Flaming Lips are an important band, perhaps the most important band in the USA. Hell, I'll even sign on with Jeff Meir's assertion in today's Gusto that "this is as good as rock has gotten since the Beatles' best"; it seems ludicrous to even go there but, if you take the classic Beatles albums starting with Rubber Soul on through Sgt. Peppers (maybe even Magical Mystery) and the last three Lips records* and similarities appear. The studios and producers were de facto members of the bands, the records sound amazing, each record utterly replaces the previous one in quality and total artistic distillation and representation, and each album is a perfect artistic statement. Very few bands work towards these ends, and fewer succeed, and I think the Lips are very much in this exclusive club. Kudos to Donny Kutzbach and Jeff Meirs for being hip to the LODE.

Special note to the Albright Knox: The Lips are totally the band to headline your second annual music fest this summer. Totally.

And can anybody explain why the mainstream American music press is hell bent on minimizing the Lips while MOJO clearly believes they ARE IMPORTANT? The reviews of AWWTM in both RS and EW were perfuctory, slight, and frankly they just seemed interested in downplaying the virtues of an album they gave 3 stars and a B to respectively (obvious efforts to retain some cred by the reviewers). My theories on this will be forthcoming...

* The Soft Bulletin, Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots, and At War With The Mystics.