The Soft Bulletin

The Flaming Lips

Product Details

• Audio CD (June 22, 1999)
• Original Release Date: June 22, 1999
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Warner Bros / Wea
• ASIN: B00000JC6C
• Also Available in: Audio Cassette  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (346 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #17,398 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

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  #73 in	Music > Alternative Rock > Alternative Styles > Rock > Neo-Psychedelia
  #74 in	Music > Alternative Rock > Indie & Lo-Fi > Dream Pop
  #78 in	Music > Alternative Rock > Alternative Styles > Rock > Noise

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com's Best of 1999
The crazed genius of the Lips comes to full flower on the sonically massive and majestic The Soft Bulletin. Head Lip Wayne Coyne compounds the band's penchant for psychedelic freak-outs with a symphonic extravaganza. The result is nothing short of magnificent, not only the best rock album of the year, but among the best recordings of the decade. In 30 years, your grandkids are going to think you're pretty damned cool for having The Soft Bulletin in your collection. --Tod Nelson

Amazon.com essential recording
The Flaming Lips' particular and peculiar genius comes to full fruition on the stupendous The Soft Bulletin. Anyone who had the gumption to actually listen to Zaireeka, a song cycle that could only be heard by playing four CDs at the exact same time on different stereos, knows that head Lip Wayne Coyne and his Oklahoma City brethren had it in them. That album, along with the Lips' Parking Lot Experiments, offered proof that Coyne wasn't playing by the same rules as everyone else. He was growing up and away from the splenetic psychedelic freak-outs of earlier albums and emerging as a first-rate composer--perhaps the first alt-rock star to earn such status.

The Soft Bulletin is absolutely colossal, a testament to their position as the vanguard of a movement that includes Spiritualized's Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space, Mercury Rev's Deserter's Songs, and Olivia Tremor Control's Black Foliage. As with those albums, Bulletin shares a love of cosmic, vaguely psychedelic pop and a closet full of pet sounds. But the Flaming Lips only uses these as a launch pad for rocketing into ethereal sonic space. Although Bulletin steps back from Zaireeka's over-the-top indulgence, it manages to be symphonic, bombastic, outrageous, and damned catchy--while still oozing the band's unique weirdness. The sound is massive and complex; gongs, harps, grand piano, bells, pipe organ, strings, oboes, choral harmonies, and, strangely, very, very little guitar squall all merge into one wall--no, wall of sound doesn't do it justice. It's a cliff of sound, propelled by drummer Steven Drozd's tremendous pounding. On top of it all, Coyne's sweet but ravaged voice yields tender lyrics that tag a catalog of Lips stalwarts, such as insects, spirituality, and superheroes. One imagines Coyne in front of a full orchestra, urging them to keep up as he sings, "Ooh, those bugs / buzzing 'round..." on "Buggin." But the Lips orchestrated the entire album in their studio, sometimes manipulating more than 200 separate tracks to achieve Bulletin's vast symphonic excess. Each song is a rare gem. "A Spoonful Weighs a Ton" sounds like a collusion of Bach and Tricky. "The Spark That Bled" infuses a fey, Belle and Sebastian-esque ditty with Led Zeppelin-like funky swagger. "The Spiderbite Song" is a shotgun wedding between a tender piano ballad and the industrial noise of things falling apart. "The Gash" is just too singular to adequately describe.

It'll be interesting to hear what the Lips do next. If The Soft Bulletin is any indication at all, they can do anything they please. And we can't possibly imagine what it will sound like. --Tod Nelson

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

65 of 72 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How often does it get this good?, July 26, 2002

By	Aaron C. Burkhalter "aaronburkhalter" (Seattle, WA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is not just a great album, this is an unbelievably rare album. Albums like this come once in a lifetime for most bands. Few bands are able to create musical experiences that could be called religious just out of their sheer beauty.
This album is beautiful, desperate, hopeless, hopefull, lost and constantly searching. This album reaches into your heart and holds it from beginning to end.
The Flaming Lips, as usual, are deceptively simple, with songs like "Buggin'" and "Race for the Prize" which contain what seem to be simple lyrics or a simple story, but it's never that simple. Reach deeper into the album, do a little more research. "Race for the Prize" isn't about a race, it's not about a scientist it's about finding a passion for something and loving it so much that you would hit rock bottom for it.
Songs like "Suddenly Everthing Has Changed" are introspectively genius, and with the mere descriptions of everyday tasks (folding laundry, putting away groceries, driving a car) and those being the moments in which everything changes.
"Waiting For Superman" is a beautiful song about desperation and waiting for the saving grace to lift up everything up of our shoulders that's "gettin' heavy."
Outside of the incredible lyrical beauty is the best production job I've heard in years on par with the likes of Brian Wilson's "Pet Sounds." The album itself bears many parallels to Pet Sounds with the diverse array of instruments and sounds with orchestra, also the beautiful instrumental interludes, plus an overall wall of sound Phil Spector-ish boom to everything, especially within "The Gash." It's been said that music is a combonation of sounds and silences, in "The Gash" the second is completely omitted.
The Flaming Lips encompass everything I love about music. They're catchy, with wonderful hooks, they make incredible ear opening sounds that just amaze, the production is deep and complex, and above all they say something without saying "Look at us! We're saying something!" Every step of their work is done with complete humility, verging on emberassment, almost as if they're surprised anyone would care. Their music goes completely off the edge, with visions as great and far reaching as John Cage, Ornette Coleman, and anyone else that completely challenged and destroyed everything we ever thought about music. And most importantly, it works. Their interviews they present themselves as performers who are just making only semi-decent music that somehow sells, but despite this lack of well deserved pride and confidence the music comes off brilliant, and I'll say I think they're one of the most genius groups to enter the scene in years. They are musical conceptualists that will always have my attention and interest.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Modern Art-Rock Masterpiece, September 11, 2002

By	Steven R. Seim "Steve Seim" (Beaver Dam, WI United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The Flaming Lips built their reputation on eclectic punk-rock and surrealistic lyrics. However, over the past few years, their music has continued to evolve and improve, both sonically and lyrically, resulting in two of the best albums of the past 10 years, "The Soft Bulletin" and, more recently, "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots."

Sonically, the band has lost none of its wonderful intensity. However, the rough edges have been smoothed, and Wayne Coyne & Co. have continued to experiment with new sounds and textures. The result is simultaneously more innovative and more accessible than their earlier recordings. "The Soft Bulletin" is power-pop meets progressive rock meets trip-hop and space rock.

Lyrically, the Lips have evolved from Dali-like weirdness to songs that movingly reflect the tension between humanity (and concepts like love, hope, courage) and the depression and alienation of post-modern society. Their philosophical searching is reflected in song titles like "Suddenly Everything Has Changed," "Waitin' for a Superman," and "What Is the Light?", and in these lines from "The Gash":

I feel like the real reason that you're quitting is that you're admitting that you've lost all the will to battle on

Will the fight for our sanity be the fight of our lives now that we've lost all the reasons that we thought that we had

Still the battle that we're in rages on 'til the end.

With this record, the Flaming Lips have created a true work of art. This is the band that everyone should be talking about - it is not hyperbole to call "The Soft Bulletin" today's "Sgt. Pepper." Unfortunately, outside of the music press and some dedicated fans, no one else seems to care.

Do yourself a favor - give this one a spin.

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Album of The Year, January 26, 2000

By	Evan Streb (ohio) - See all my reviews

In what may very well be the worst year in music history ever (with 1985 being a distant second), The Soft Bulletin was a great way for me to keep from destroying my stereo all the time. Lovely lovely pop songs, but not too pop (there's no way this'll EVER get popular with the Eiffel 65 crowd) and just enough quirkiness to keep them in the underground. One of the best produced albums ever. Someone's watch goes off during "What Is The Light?", there's this purposely annoying blip of sound at the beginning of "Suddenly Everything Has Changed" and they keep them in for no good reason. The lyrics deal mainly with love and the course of humanity and scientists competing to save mankind and, ummm, bugs and spiderbites. REALLY long way from "She Don't Use Jelly", wouldn't you say (I'm not knocking that song, I'm just saying that you can't sing lyrics like that all your life and the Lips had to mature)? The drums sound absolutely POWERFUL, and there's also some of the most beautiful string arrangements ever heard on a rock record (my second favorite in that category is Love's underground classic "Forever Changes"), especially "Suddenly Everything Is Changed" and "Feeling Youreself Disintegrate". Then it all ends on a gorgeous note with the slow and mourning "Sleeping On The Roof", which boasts what very well be the saddest melody I've ever heard. DEE-DEE DOO-DOO, Doo DEE-DEE DOO-DOO, Duh Doo Dee Doo Dee do DWEEEEE... I guess you just have to hear it. Lord knows what they were thinking when they wrote that but to me it captures the album perfectly.

Oh yeah. And then they completely RUIN the whole mood of peace and finale when they put on those stupid remixes of "Race For The Prize" and "Waiting for Superman". Oh well. I can just hit that little "Program" key on my CD player and it's no big deal. Please buy this album. You don't know the meaning of the phrase "Good pop music" if you listen to nothing but Britney Spears and Ricky Martin all the damn time.