Customer Reviews

The Soft Bulletin

5 star:		(243)
4 star:		(40)
3 star:		(25)
2 star:		(18)
1 star:		(18)

 

 

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.

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.

This album changed my life. It made the Flaming Lips not only my favorite band but also an inspirational guide. The songwriting on this record is perfect. 1. Race for the Prize- Gets things in motion. You realize that this uplifting gem has more to it than you first expect. Awesome lyrics. 2. A Spoonful Weighs a Ton- Awesome lyrics again. This song has a killer breakdown which makes you feel Brazillian. 3. The Spark That Bled- It gets even better. I stood up and I said "Yeah" 4. The Spiderbite Song- This song perfectly describes friendship, and how when you think that tragedy will strike, your friends are still there. 5. Buggin- Totally fun. The production on this is top notch. 6. What is the Light?- Production Production production. Vocals of Greatness. This song makes you feel like you can actually see auras around people. Boy, did that sentence just make me sound weird. 7. The Observer- This song is an instrumental. It just takes you further on the crazy canoe that is the "soft bulletin". Guitar is dope on this. 8. Waiting for Superman- This is a sad song, but like "Hey Jude" is a sad song. Bass shines on this. Piano is great. Wayne almost makes you tear up on this one. 9. Suddenly Everything Has Changed- This has to do with the shock of life irrevocably changing. It is a great tune. 10. The Gash- I don't want to describe The Gash because it is so ill that you should just go into it blindfolded. Genius. 11. Feeling Yourself Disintegrate- The album builds perfectly up to this song. Wayne talks about life, death and its value. Not for the beach but anyone in the world at any point in life can appreciate the beauty in this song. 12. Sleepin on the Roof- This song has a sprinkler-like sound in it. You actually feel like you just watched the OU game on television and decided to rest outside. Listening to this song makes you think about all that Wayne, Steve, and Michael have shared with you on the album. 13 and 14- Remixes to Race for the Prize and Waitin for Superman. They are the same chords, but the moods are different. When it ends, you feel forever enlightened.

This band changed my life.

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.

A triumph of sheer sonic perfection, "The Soft Bulletin" picks up where "Pet Sounds" and "Dark Side of the Moon" left off so many years ago. Awash in a beautiful airy effects-laden atmosphere, the entire album is gloriously cohesive in an "Abbey Road" sort of way. While each song is strong enough to stand on its own, the sheer genius of "The Soft Bulletin" becomes obvious when the disc is played through in its entirety. Sonically, the album is literally miles ahead of almost everything else being created in the modern rock/pop world. Let's just say that the average MTV band isn't concerned with creating the intricate soundscapes that Wayne Coyne and company paint so beautifully here. Listen with headphones to fully appreciate the pocket symphonies which lift songs like "The Gash" and "Feeling Yourself Disintegrate" into rarified air. The array of instruments which color each song is simply mind-boggling. Ditto the innovative chord changes and song structures. In hands of lesser talents the "Soft Bulletin", with its kitchen-sink production, may have fallen into overkill territory. However, the arrangements manage to stay affloat and even achieve a light subtlety thanks to shifting dynamics and clever rhythmic structures.

"The Soft Bulletin" is that rare album which is made for the sake of great art, not commerce. How refeshing that a modern band actually cares about being great rather than just appealing to the lowest common demnominator fanbase. The results really show as the overused term "masterpiece" certainly applies when describing what just might be the best American album of the 1990s.

It tookd me several listens, myself, and I'm a
lover of psychedelic music. I just wasn't paying
attention, as I think some of this disc's critics
aren't either. For one thing, please lay off of
Wayne's voice! Same comments when Neil Young
(whom Wayne sounds similar to) became popular.
Wayne's voice is beautiful, melodic, high pitched
but gorgeous. This album is so lush and beautiful.
Some won't get it, others will, but it is wonderful, beautiful,
majestic, one for the ages, but it takes a bit of listening
to to get it. As mankind is not perfectible, some never
will get it. But it is beautiful, one of the best records
ever. Give it a chance and believe, and if you just
don't get it, I'm sorry, go back to your Strokes.

Let me first confess that this is the first album of Flaming Lips that I have heard, and as many listeners have said, it is kind of hard to dig in it at a first listen; I am one of those who thought at the first listening that he/she was hearing a piece of "idiotic" and "directionless" music. I only remember two other albums that caused me such a strong impression in their own field of music experimentation: Loveless, by My Bloody Valentine, and Lateralus, by Tool. Those albums had the virtue of turning me, after several attentive listenings, in a follower of each group. So has it happened with Soft Bulletin, by The Flaming Lips. The album really sounds strange, weird, and that is because it is a melting pot of different styles of music both in form as in function. The Soft Bulletin is a treasure containing original treatments of country-folk, blues, godspell, surf rock, symphonic rock, choral music, psychodelia, and possibly other types of music that I have not yet been able to identify. At the same time, the songs are highly melodic, harmonically dense, catchy and even very danceable at times, turning them into a part of a pop flavoured ouvre that can appeal to listeners not used to the complexities (and pretentions, some would argue) of some art prog rock music. And finally, the texture of the sound and the atmosphere of the music make you imagine sometimes a film of some sort, or imagine distant and strange environments. Sometimes the music suggest relaxation, sometimes induces to dance. I hope that someone in the near future will lay out the comparisons between the Soft Bulletin and Sargent Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, by the Beatles, Smile, by Brian Wilson, and Dark Side of the Moon, by Pink Floyd, among other historical albums. I cite those albums in order to give the readers the parameters within which The Soft Bulletin should be considered: art pop music, because this is what those albums are about: the fusion between artistry, musicianship, and pop sensibility. A word should be said about Coyne's lyrics and voice in this album. I think that voice and lyrics make the perfect match, because Coyne sings with a very ironic style, like someone who is saying something serious in a not so serious way, which is the trait that befuddle listeners that in the first try consider the music "idiotic". And the lyrics themselves are ironic, revealing the frailty and at the same time marvel of the human condition, as a product of the struggle between the ilusion of power given by knowledge, science or politics, and the reality of our finitude, our limitations and contingent existence. So it is that the best and competitive scientist is in the end a human, with children and wife or husband, and the unexpected bite of a spider in the band guitarrist's hand can destroy the author (Coyne) and the band, and so it is that we cannot wait for a Superman to save us if we do not decide to save ourselves together!!! Folks, some of these lyrics bring tears to my eyes. From now on I will search for the music of these guys! So, what can I add? Listen The Soft Bulleting, and if you do not get it at a first try, give it several chances, you will not repent, and on the contrary, will give thanks to God that there are still creative musicians able to uplift you, as Superman would do.

The major reason that "The Soft Bulletin" is such an amazing album is because at the time that it came out no really excepted that the Flaming Lips could make an album like it. Whilst they constantly realised albums that were brilliant, they were very much a cult college band.

With this album they were free to create without the pressure of having to come up with a hit album. That freedom led to one of the greatest albums of the decade (and possibly of all time).

This album was a radical departure form the punk sound that had dominated realises like "Transmissions From The Satellite Heart (which is a very good album by the way, and you should defiantly check it out, worth buying it for She Don't Use Jelly alone).

On this album that sound was replaced with lush orchestral arrangements, and dense sonic landscapes, heartfelt lyrics. But the ace in the hole for this is that the Lips pull it off with out any hint of pretension.

This is an album that can't help but cheer you up on a bad day. Even when the rain is pouring down out of the heavens, put this record and it will make the rain seem magical, I think my brother friend described the experience of listing to the soft bulletin the best when he said it was like listing to a ray of sunshine. What makes this album all the more special is that this is their 10th album, and it sounds like their first there are not too many bands around that can still come up with fresh ideas by album 9.
This album is a hell of a way to have closed the 20th century. It the album of 99 for sure and certain, it toped (40 year end best ofs, not many album to do) its one of the albums of the decade, and quite possibly one of the greatest album of all time. This is should be studied by music classes.

Buy this and treasure this forever

When I got home after buying this CD I immediately popped it in the stereo. I was sitting in front of my stereo at this point. By the time it was into the third track I was lying in the middle of my living room floor on my back with my hands behind my head and a HUGE smirk on my face. I just couldn't believe what I was hearing and how good it was. I was almost ready to give up on new music or any music for that matter. I was tired of the music I owned and couldn't believe the stuff on the radio, the so-called "new rock." In a decade of Korn and Limp Bizkit clones, it totally restored my faith in music. Period.

I became a big Flaming Lips fan when I bought their 1990 album 'In a Priest Driven Ambulance' on a whim. And boy was I hooked after one listen. After having mindblowing experiences to their 4-cd's-to-be-played-simultaneously set 'Zaireeka, this album was easily my most anticipated of this year. Just one listen to Race for the Prize was all it convinced me that Wayne and the Lips have made another brilliant album. As what you can surmise from the song titles, most of the songs deal with mortality and death (The Spiderbite Song, Feeling Yourself Disintegrate, etc.). Waitin' for a Superman, which was inspired by the passing of Wayne's father to cancer, is simply the most beautiful song I've heard this year, or for the past 2 years for that matter. Everytime I listen to this wonderful album I manage to hear something new that I may have missed before.

This album is simply amazing. And I'm quite sure this album will still be wonderful 10 years from now.