20 years after the release of one of the genre’s most beloved albums, alt-rock icons The Flaming Lips are set to return to Australia this year to perform The Soft Bulletin in full.
Released in May of 1999, The Soft Bulletin truly came out of left field, for both the band and their dedicated fans.
Having flirted with mainstream success following 1993’s Transmissions From The Satellite Heart, their Clouds Taste Metallic follow-up in 1995 didn’t quite make the sort of splash that the record executives might have hoped for. By the time 1997’s highly-experimental Zaireeka had divided critics across the board, fans didn’t know what to expect.
However, when The Soft Bulletin was finally unleashed onto the world, the overall reception was unanimously positive. In fact, publications like Pitchfork – who gave Zaireeka a rare 0/10 rating – cited the album as one of the greatest of all-time, honouring it with an equally-rare 10/10 rating.
Now, more than 20 years since The Flaming Lips shared was has been called their magnum opus, the group will make their return to Australia in September to perform the record in its entirety.
To celebrate these upcoming shows, we chatted to frontman Wayne Coyne to discuss how an album so majestic and revered was delivered by a humble rock band from Oklahoma.
Check out The Flaming Lips’ ‘Race For The Prize’:
When The Soft Bulletin was first released, few could have expected the impact it would have in the ensuing years and decades. In fact, response to the record was so great that it has since gone on to be considered as one of the greatest albums of all time, with some critics labelling it as the “Pet Sounds of the ’90s”.
However, as Wayne Coyne explains, while he understands the legacy, he notes that this was never the intention of the band when they first hit the studio.
“Well, now that it’s twenty years afterwards, you start to get a little bit more used to what people mean by that,” he explains. “Since it was so long ago, there are, really, elements of it that you kind of just accept [that] we did make it, but we didn’t make it thinking, ‘oh, it’s going to be compared to Pet Sounds,’ and stuff like that.
“You just make it with your heart and soul, and we were really just making it because we liked it. We didn’t really expect anybody else in the world to really care, you know? But, I think we’re very lucky that at the right time it just hit certain people.
“But, I would say that I think it took a lot of time for it to seem like it is that type of record, which we’re relieved of.”
At the time that the band were making what would eventually be considered a classic record, they had already begun to look forward to what the future held. To Coyne, these sessions were relatively run-of-the-mill, with no indication that they were witnessing the creation of a genre-defining release.
“We would have never accepted, or we didn’t even want to accept at the time, that people would say, ‘hey, this is an important record’,” he explains. “I mean, we had already started to make the next record — the Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots record — even before [The Soft Bulletin] came out.
“We were just so immersed in songs and creating sounds and making albums that we didn’t really even think about that we had to be the dudes that made this record. We were just on to the next thing, you know?”
“But, I think as time has gone by, I do understand what it is that The Soft Bulletin imparts to a sensitive, intense person, and what it helps them with,” Coyne admits. “I think Steven [Drozd, guitarist and keyboardist] and I both understand why people listen to it.
“In the beginning, we wouldn’t have wanted it to seem like a Velvet Underground record where people listen to it because it’s cool, you know? I want people to listen to it because they need that moment, that little help, or whatever it is; its comforting little message.
“I think that if it would have been too overwhelmingly celebrated, it probably couldn’t have worked. We would have never, ever dreamed or ever thought that we would be able to say, ‘yeah, we have a record that’s like that’.
“It’s really too much to contemplate, because then you’ve just got to… y’know, what do you do? What do you do after that?”
Check out ‘Buggin”:
Two years before The Soft Bulletin, The Flaming Lips released the divisive Zaireeka, a four-disc record that was designed to be played simultaneously on four seperate players. At the time, many critics lambasted the record as being either too avant-garde, or logistically unaccessible for the average fan to experience.
Despite the fact that the group were at risk of being dropped from the Warner Bros. record label, Wayne Coyne explains that there was no desire for the group to fall in line and make a more straightforward release to appeal to the label and critics.
“When we were getting ready to put out The Soft Bulletin, it felt – to us anyway – just as fucking freaky and out-of-step, and weird, and not-hip like Zaireeka and lots of our other records,” he recalls. “It seemed like another one of those records that only us would make.
“But, I think we were getting better at making songs and being more vulnerable with what I would say in the lyrics, and the music was not pretending to be anything.
“There was no irony, there was no references, there was none of that we despised about late ‘90s music. We were making an album that we thought, ‘who’s going to listen to it?’, because we’re not making jokes, we’re not making fun of anybody, we’re just simply singing about this internal quagmire.”
“I think that because I was feeling it, and because Steven was feeling it, and because [producer] Dave Fridmann was feeling the same way, all three of us were guiding The Soft Bulletin,” Coyne recalls. “We didn’t know what it was going to be, but we had a sense of what it wasn’t going to be and every time we get into something that wasn’t, we would veer away from it.
“I hear it now because we play it all the time now, you know, we’re doing The Soft Bulletin shows, and really, we’ve always kind of done The Soft Bulletin shows, but really I think we’re getting better and better at them the more that we do.
“It really is this singular story. In the end, I think it really does have this gentle message and none of that, I think, we could have known.
“I think being the makers of it is not the same as being the listeners of it. And that’s just the motherfucker of how art is. How you make it, you don’t know what its impact is going to be, but I think those little things that we thought we were running from… the music was running away from this despair and sadness and yet, it isn’t about despair and sadness – it’s really a very optimistic record.”
Check out ‘The Spiderbite Song’:
20 years removed from the release of The Soft Bulletin, the album is now seen as a snapshot of its time, providing a glimpse of the band’s evolution towards a more symphonic, grandiose future, while still showcasing the general absurdity that fans have come to know and love.
Despite having been something of an unexpected success that was created without any great expectations, the group’s iconic frontman maintains that they wouldn’t change anything about its composition in hindsight.
“We were playing through [the album] and doing all the rehearsals for a week, or so, and [playing] some of the silly songs like ‘Buggin’’ and ‘The Spiderbite Song’,” Coyne recalls, “and I just think it’s kind of dorky, but I’m wrong because that’s what makes The Soft Bulletin so universal.
“Because it does have a sense of humour even in the fucking bleakest shit, people still have a sense of humour, and this album talks about how wonderful it is to care about your friend, in something as casual and sentimental as that.
“If I thought I knew what it should be, I’m sure I would’ve messed it up, but we didn’t really know what it was. We really were just going on the slightest tangent of feeling.”
“I made that album cover before we finished The Soft Bulletin,” Coyne adds. “I had already gotten the rights to that picture, and I had already positioned it to be like, ‘it sounds like this.’
“I know that sounds like a silly thing, but you really are working in complete darkness — you don’t really know where to go, and these little markers of, ‘the way this cover looks… let’s make it sound like this’.
“For me, now, to say I would change it would be like, ‘who am I?’ I didn’t make it to be good. We kind of look at it like the gods of the universe said, ‘humanity down there on planet Earth need this thing, and someone’s gotta fucking make it.’
“And then they said, ‘this weird band from Oklahoma, they should make it, and let them deal with it! But if they make it, I think it will be believable.’ And we would have said, “no, no, don’t put that on us, we’re just weirdos from Oklahoma, we don’t know what the fuck we’re doing!”
“So, I think something like that is at play, and we’re making our music, and we’re doing this thing, and some other deeper thing was guiding this ship. So, no, I wouldn’t know what to change.
“We didn’t really discover how to autotune our singing very well. As we’ve gone along we’ve gotten better at finding out what’s quirky and what’s really bad, or what’s good, or whatever, in my range of singing. But, some of that stuff on The Soft Bulletin is horribly out of tune. It’s horribly cracked up, but it’s that funny vulnerability that makes it not just a bunch of music.
“It’s not a record made by producers and musicians, it’s a record made by these over-feeling weirdos who are not going to give up, and that’s the only defence.”
Check out ‘A Spoonful Weighs A Ton’:
In the overall history of The Flaming Lips’ career, The Soft Bulletin is undoubtedly a watershed moment; giving the band their first taste of wide-scale success, and serving as a turning point for their creative process.
At the end of the day though, Wayne Coyne explains that he is as surprised as anyone that the band were able to create such a record, but noting they’re incredibly proud to add it to their resumé as a band.
“I am always in complete awe that people will compare our music to this genius, timeless music like The Beach Boys,” Coyne explains.
“We gladly say, ‘yeah, we’re those guys… we did that’. We never think that, ‘oh, we have to make another The Soft Bulletin,’ I mean, we wouldn’t be able to. It’s the sort of record that once you make it, you’re not in that space anymore.
“The dudes that made that record, they got through their quagmire by making that record. We could never go back and have that quagmire again. It’s like, ‘now you know something you didn’t know’.
“It never occurred to us that we should make more The Soft Bulletins. We’ve got that one, and it’s there anytime anyone wants to listen to it. It’s there forever, and even for us, it’s already there, and it frees you to enjoy your life, and have fun, and take more risks, and see what else is out there.”
“We never view things like, ‘oh, geez, now we’ve gotta play this music forever’,” he reveals. “We were always elated, and still are. We get to be the ones that play The Soft Bulletin. It’s a shock to us every time we hear it, because if we didn’t make it, we would go see a band play it, and be like, ‘fuck’.
“To me, it’s like anyone who makes music, and produces records and stuff like what we do already knows that, and you wouldn’t spend the rest of your life trying to relive that thing because it’s painful, it’s chaotic, and it’s a horrible confrontation with the brutality of the world. Once you grapple with that and understand it, you’re glad to move on.
“You’re glad to say, ‘let’s share this with people.’ Everybody at a certain age has this confrontation, and I don’t want them to think I’m suffering through that. I want them to know that they’ll get through it, and they can live a great, happy, beautiful life in this brutal world, and not kill themselves, frankly… not be so shocked by it, not be so defeated by it that they don’t want to live in this world.
“I think The Soft Bulletin is one of those avenues that if you can take that avenue, though it’s hard and though it’s a struggle, and face confrontation with a lot of horrible things, you can come out of the other side of it without killing yourself, which I think is a great service. It’s what it did for us.”
Check out The Flaming Lips’ ‘Waitin’ For A Superman’:
The Flaming Lips The Soft Bulletin 20th anniversary tour
Saturday, September 28th (New Show)
Fortitude Music Hall, Brisbane, QLD
Tickets: Secret Sounds
Monday, September 30th
Sydney Opera House, Sydney, NSW
Tickets: Sydney Opera House
Tuesday, October 1st
Sydney Opera House, Sydney, NSW
Tickets: Sydney Opera House
Thursday, October 3rd
Hamer Hall, Melbourne, VIC
Tickets: Melbourne International Arts Festival
Friday, October 4th
Hamer Hall, Melbourne, VIC
Tickets: Melbourne International Arts Festival
