The Flaming Lips

It feels redundant to say The Flaming Lips make complete weirdness out of The Beatles’ iconic Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album. This complete reworking—er, deconstruction—of songs known the world over for their bright, shimmering sounds and Technicolor melodies will annoy purists, naturally, but it's actually a fun, wild ride for everyone else. Miley Cyrus sweetly croons “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” while the endless list of “Fwends” (well, 27 strong, including Grace Potter, Tegan & Sara, and Foxygen) ensures tracks are flush with madness. Unexpected highlight: The Electric Wurms, led by the Lips’ Steven Drozd, re-channel “Fixing a Hole” into an astral ballad.

The Flaming Lips have announced Where The Viaduct Looms, an album of Nick Cave covers sung by the 14-year-old musician Nell Smith. A fan who first met Wayne Coyne while attending a Flaming Lips show with her family in 2018, Smith stayed in contact as she started learning guitar and writing her own songs. When a planned trip to record with the band in Oklahoma had to be cancelled due to COVID, Coyne suggested that they collaborate remotely.

The Flaming Lips' first release for the label will be a project that's shaping up to be one of the most talked-about releases of the year: THE FLAMING LIPS AND HEADY FWENDS. In between one-off shows scattered around the world over the past several months The Flaming Lips still found time to record a series of unique and experimental sessions for an album featuring a diverse cross-section of heavy friends from every corner of the musical cosmos.

With The Flaming Lips‘ enduring relevance—be it through timely collaborations, ballsy experiments, or the ability to still offend—it’s easy to forget that they’ve been a band for more than 30 years. Now, that history will be unearthed and explored with a series of new reissues from Rhino and Warner Bros. Records.

SCRATCHING THE DOOR highlights tracks recorded by The Flaming Lips’ original line-up, which featured Wayne Coyne’s brother Mark on vocals. The album includes the band’s first and second cassette demos, in addition to The Flaming Lips first self-released EP, and marks the first time all of these recordings have been collected together on a single release. Among the other featured tracks are covers of The Who’s “Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere,” Led Zeppelin’s “Communication Breakdown” and the theme song from the 1960’s Batman television series, which previously appeared on Rykodisc’s 2002 compilation, Finally The Punk Rockers Are Taking Acid.