Photo Credit: Adam Baker

Just when it felt like it all might be over. Just when it felt like the Flaming Lips were galaxies away from their bold, beautiful abilities to grasp onto infinitity for us all. Just when Wayne Coyne was about to walk, maybe even leap over the fine line between songster for all of the lonely, scared, but tough nerds out there— and explode into something so, so…so, well, unrecognizable and unrelateable to his fearless freaks: just then, do the Lips…and Coyne turn around and shed some kind of light on all of the confusion and loss that the monotonous fact of “life” bring to the able and willing out there, on this planet. Finally, it feels like home again. Finally,  it feels like the Flaming Lips again. Finally, the newest single “Sunrise (Eyes Of The Young)” reminds Yoshimi that she too, is a black belt in karate. Phew.

It may be the torrential snow and subsequent sub-zero weather sweeping through the northeastern part of the North American continent that sparked a *minor* bit of melancholia in todays report. But, when the sun hasn’t shown in days, and the hands typing away at the keyboard start to take on a translucent, vein-ey-blue hue…one might find themself floored at the musical equivalent to comfort food— they may even let a tear or two fall (when no one is looking, of course) when the Flaming Lips manage to bring the sun out for them. Even if it is a kind of bittersweet sort of mutual understanding—its an understanding that means everything, when everyone else around you comprehends nothing.

While the new single is refreshingly compassionate, but rooted in a sort of metaphoric, and dark type of reality— so too are the first two singles released by the Lips in earlier months, all in anticipation for the very nearing in date release of the full studio album, OCZY MLODY due out January 13th, 2017 (enter previous singles The Castle and How??). So, the Flaming Lips new record’s namesake welcomes an obvious, almost romantic reference to the same opioids responsible for an irrational spike in addiction and drug-related deaths currently itching at the neck of the US’s button-up collar. But, when original instincts are to wonder why the fetishization of something with long-term negative consequences, for the harrowing…fleeting moment caused in such a chemically-induced, and thus impure grasp on true, unadulterated bliss?

So, the answer lies in an obvious spot: floating amongst the lyrics to the latest single, “You’ve made the morning dew/Now you’re showing me the truth/But I don’t want to believe you…/The sunbeams/Burnin’ my child dreams/The machine that brings me joy/Now it’s just a stupid toy/Oh, if I could/Go back and find you/I’d kiss your glowing head/And hear the things you said/And always believe you…” 

But, as expectations and previous experiences suddenly desert you, Wayne Coyne via NME explains, “at first [the album title] appealed to us because it appeared to sound like a drug; it reminded us of oxycodone…and then I think this initial appeal made us curious about what it could mean, and I believe when we looked it up, the very first thing we saw was that it meant ‘eyes of the young’… We wouldn’t like the title ‘Eyes of the Young,’ but we liked how these other jumbled words could mean that.”

Through this, perhaps, a bigger message comes through— that through the eyes of the young (and maybe even the old) do words come together and then break apart…boomerang-ing and morphing into one thing and then another. But, the key to understanding it, to growing in this weird fucking life, is to just accept it and know that “love is neither living or dying/
It’s a power in your mind…” always in constant flex. So, just, breathe. Oh, and maybe enjoy the ride too.

P.s. Find the music video for Sunrise (Eyes of The Young) in all of it’s technicolor, ethereal dream coat glory below! Oh, and a track list for OCZY MLODY is just right beyond that there video kiddies.

Oczy Mlody:

1. Oczy Mlody
2. How??
3. There Should Be Unicorns
4. Sunrise (Eyes of the Young)
5. Nigdy Nie (Never No)
6. Galaxy I Sink
7. One Night While Hunting For Faeries and Witches and Wizards To Kill
8. Do Glowy
9. Listening To The Frogs With Demon Eyes
10. The Castle
11. Almost Home (Blisko Domu)
12. We A Famly