The Flaming Lips issued American Head, their 20th studio album, via Warner Records. American Head features 13 tracks co-produced by the band and longtime collaborator Dave Fridmann.
The album includes a guest appearance from Kacey Musgraves, who contributed backing vocals to “God And The Policeman.” All 13 tracks on the LP are credited jointly to The Flaming Lips.
Wayne Coyne shared the following about the LP as part of a longer-form story entitled “We’re An American Band”:
The Flaming Lips are from Oklahoma. We never thought of ourselves as an AMERICAN band. I know growing up (when I was like 6 or 7 years old) in Oklahoma I was never influenced by, or was very aware of any musicians from Oklahoma. We mostly listened to the Beatles and my mother loved Tom Jones (this is in the ’60s)… it wasn’t till I was about 10 or 11 that my older brothers would know a few of the local musician dudes.
So… for most of our musical life (as The Flaming Lips starting in 1983) we’ve kind of thought of ourselves as coming from ‘Earth’… not really caring WHERE we were actually from. So for the first time in our musical life we began to think of ourselves as ‘AN AMERICAN BAND’… telling ourselves that it would be our identity for our next creative adventure. We had become a 7-piece ensemble and were beginning to feel more and more of a kinship with groups that have a lot of members in them. We started to think of classic American bands like The Grateful Dead and Parliament-Funkadelic and how maybe we could embrace this new vibe.
The music and songs that make up the AMERICAN HEAD album are based in a feeling. A feeling that, I think, can only be expressed through music and songs. We were, while creating it, trying to NOT hear it as sounds… but to feel it. Mother’s sacrifice, Father’s intensity, Brother’s insanity, Sister’s rebellion…I can’t quite put it into words.
Something switches and others (your brothers and sisters and mother and father…your pets) start to become more important to you…in the beginning there is only you… and your desires are all that you can care about…but… something switches.. I think all of these songs are about this little switch.
Listen to The Flaming Lips’ American Head album below:
https://music.apple.com/us/album/american-head/1516243970
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