Album review: The Flaming Lips, The Terror

A fortnight or so ago, Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne described The Terror to this publication as “dissonant, even amongst itself”, which seemed like an exciting prospect from a band as reckless in the studio as The Flaming Lips. Unfortunately, although dissonance certainly features largely on the Lips’ thirteenth studio album, The Terror also repeats itself often in a way that, despite numerous past trips into dreaded concept album territory, none of the band’s records have done so before. This is a problem.

Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots is routinely trotted out as a rare example of a concept album that doesn’t eat itself, however this is largely due to hefty themes such as ‘love’ and ‘death’ being vaguely wrapped around orchestrated music which does all the heavy lifting. Likewise, 1997’s Zaireeka, designed to be played simultaneously on four separate stereos, was sonically startling, if forever stifled by its inherently clunky ‘concept’. Whereas on past albums the band would glide gracefully through genres, here they mine similar sonic terrain throughout, to the record’s eternal detriment; the prettier moments are thematically anchored to the unsettling angular moments by virtue of being driven by keyboard sounds, studio manipulation, and not much else.

The Terror is a long album, but a frustratingly slight one. The tiresome thirteen-minute centerpiece You Lust is hypnotic and heavenly, but won’t reward more than one listen – unfortunately representative of the album as a whole. Although it sounds revolutionary when being spoken of, there is very little in the way of actual exploration. It all seems very muted and careful, as if while experimenting with sonic washes and dissonant soundscapes, they forgot to insert the unguarded abandon which is central to all their greatest music.

Coyne tells us The Terror is untamed; we feel it never got the chance to run wild.