Clouds Taste Metallic

The Flaming Lips | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (September 19, 1995)
• Original Release Date: September 19, 1995
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Warner Bros / Wea
• ASIN: B000002MYC
• Also Available in: Audio Cassette  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (46 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #14,938 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #40 in Music > Alternative Rock > Indie & Lo-Fi > Dream Pop
  • #72 in Music > Alternative Rock > American Alternative > General

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com essential recording

The great thing about Flaming Lips records is that each new one renders all its predecessors obsolete. Clouds Taste Metallic continues the fine Lips tradition of quantum improvement. It's an elaborately orchestrated masterwork of crashing cymbals, chiming bells, tinkling pianos, buzzing guitars, chirping birds, humming projectors, exploding cities, cheering crowds, and vocals stacked to the stratosphere. Each song goes gleefully over the top, but every ridiculous element somehow seems just right. While the carnival atmosphere and silly song titles distract you from band leader Wayne Coyne's serious ambition, the album's power bubbles up from hidden depths and eventually overwhelms you. The smoldering packages in "Lightning Strikes the Postman" and the sleeping millions dreaming about killing the boss in "Bad Days" are funny, but they're also unnerving, and the band builds a whole song out of the sad truth that "Evil Will Prevail." The sense that this isn't all just fun and games makes happier moments such as the cosmic orgasm of "When You Smile" sound like something much more than a hippie's wet dream. This album isn't music to take drugs to; it's the drug itself. --Tim Quirk

Product Description

After lauded indie albums, The Flaming Lips debuted on Warner Bros. with 1991's Hit To Death In The Future Head. Transmissions From The Satellite Heart and Clouds Taste Metallic followed. 1999's The Soft Bulletin topped numerous year-end best-of listsand helped rank the band among the most influential in the world. 2002's Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots ranked #4 in Spin and #11 in NME on their end-of-yearlists, and won a Grammy®. --This text refers to the Vinyl edition.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Taste the metallic clouds, July 31, 2003

By 

E. A Solinas "ea_solinas" (MD USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Clouds Taste Metallic (Audio CD)

It's hard not to like the Flaming Lips. These alt-rockers take such elaborate pleasure in being over-the-top weird that's impossible not to be sucked in. Wonderfully weird titles, complex music laced with unusual instruments, and a can't-be-copied sense of wonder make this one of the best albums to come out of the 90s.

From the hypnotic crackle of "Abandoned Hospital Ship," we soar into the lower-key "Psychiatric Explorations of the Fetus With Needles," the insanely lovely "Placebo Headwound" ("Where does outer space end/ it's sort of hard to imagine"), the charmingly catchy "This Here Giraffe," the harder-edged "Guy Who Got a Headache and Accidentally Saves the World" (isn't that the best title?), the more haunting "When You Smile," the delicious space-rock "They Punctured My Yolk," sizzling (no pun intended) "Lightning Strikes the Postman," and the thought-provoking, catchy "Christmas at the Zoo" ("Their wasn't any snow on Christmas eve/and I knew what I should do/I thought I'd free the animals all locked up at the zoo...")

You can tell an album is a winner if the lead singer informs you "It's just a supernatural delay." But this album is in a world of lightning-struck mailmen, talking animals, spaceships, outer space, dreams of shooting your boss, astronauts, and sparkling lights. The scifi-rock edge that was later further refined is here in its glory, tempered by more earthly material (like "Bad Days").

The brilliant basic music is enhanced by cymbals, screaming, bing-bang-booms, hums and buzzes and chimes. Anything that fits will somehow fit in. Wayne Coyne's voice is a little thin and flawed, but that only enhances the extraordinary music. The lyrics are determinedly weird and sometimes satirical, sometimes sad, sometimes very thought-provoking. But the entire album, welded together, has an aura of childlike wonder, an appreciation for the fantastical.

While "The Soft Bulletin" may remain the Flaming Lips' best album musically, "Clouds Taste Metallic" is a fantastic, playful psychedelic theme album, a sort of colorful space-rock. Highly recommended. It's an acid trip burned into a CD.

29 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Clouds Taste Metallic" will make you loose your head!, June 14, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Clouds Taste Metallic (Audio CD)

It's after listening to one of their albums like this one that, when you hear someone say "Flaiming Lips...? Oh yeah, the 'She Don't Use Jelly' dudes," you want to dump a bucket of custard on their heads. So start pouring the dairy products in the paint can because this album is truly phenomenal! It is with "Clouds Taste Metallic" that they finally get their freakshow together. The fact that something can be this weird, beautiful, warped, and melodic all at the same time gives you hope for the future of music. At least a little. With Wayne Coyne's plaintive whine (and I mean that in a GOOD way) and the joyful swells of carnival-like music, they create songs that will leave you with a bittersweet feeling inside. The Flaming Lips are always interesting to listen to and this album will give your ears something to chew on for a long time to come. It shows that pop can still be inventive AND fun at the same time. The lyrics are so unique and utterly compelling in their Brothers-Grimm-on-acid narration that you'll hear lines like "Kim's got a watermelon gun/It's the consciousness of love" and say to yourself "y'know he might have something there!" A lot of critics say this album reminds them of "Pet Sounds", it reminds me of when you were a kid and tried Pop Rocks for the first time. Those nuggets start crackling in your mouth and for a split-second you think your skull might just burst like a pinata. But then you think, "Hey, this stuff tastes great! It's really sweet and sounds neat! Who cares if my head explodes!" 'Nuff said.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If you love the Lips, or infectious rock, do not hesitate, July 16, 2003

By 

Michael Kluge (San Jose, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Clouds Taste Metallic (Audio CD)

Here, in all its glory, is the other end of the Lips' spectrum: hard rock guitars squalling, heavy rhytmn section, and the same great off-kilter Wayne Coyne, hamming up every song in that beautiful way of his. If you don't think you could explore the Lips after their albeit more popular "Soft Bulletin" and "Yoshimi," you might find yourself surprised. If you've never explored the Lips before, this is just as good a place to start.

Informed by the echoes of grunge, "Clouds" manages to be leagues more joyful, playful, and imaginative than most anything from that era (even quite a bit of Nirvana). For those not familiar with the band, their psychedelic leanings and Coyne's boyish, cracking voice may put you off, yet in the end try resisting a song entitled "This Here Giraffe." "The Guy who Got a Headache and Accidentally Saved the World," besides having one of the best titles ever, is an absolute hard-rock masterpiece, warm and bubbling in every way. Steve Drozd makes quick, expert work of drumming, seemingly filling every nook and cranny possible with reverbing, echoing crashes. That bands like this have such gusto and sound so powerful and confident on an indie recording is amazing. It's a shame "Clouds" hasn't received more attention. If you're delving deeper into this band, show them how much you appreciate their work and pick up this overlooked masterpiece immediately.