Album Review: The Flaming Lips’ Freaky Fairy Tale

Once upon a time, in a faraway land, the queen died giving birth to a son, who happened to be a giant.  As the boy grew, he saw visions of his mother in the night sky, and after all knowledge, wisdom, the physical universe itself, and all existence is magically sucked into his head, the young king becomes beloved by the people of his land. When a dangerous natural disaster threatens the kingdom, what will the king do to protect it? Then things get dramatic; then they get weird.

Without giving too much away, alt-rock veterans, TheFlaming Lips, return with their 15^th (or 17^th or 18^th) album, depending on how you count them, and with it, they also return to form to an extent, especially compared to their releases over the past 15 years or so. King’s Mouth is a very focused and, by Lips standards, concise album that features 12 songs in 42 minutes, each contributing to a narrative concept that builds as a fairy tale leading to an emotionally powerful climax and falling action on the album’s second side. Sonically crisp and engaging throughout, producer David Fridmann again lends his ear and skill in helping the band realize the sounds and textures they wished to capture and use to build their story.  Core band members, WayneCoyne, Steven Drozd, and Michael Ivins, continue to anchor the project, now active for over 35 years, while collaborating with newcomers Derek Brown, Jake Ingalls, Matt Kirksey, and Nicholas Ley, each contributing various musical elements and visual components to related artwork and music videos, though Coyne continues to handle most of the lead vocals as usual.

In the case of King’s Mouth, between-song narration is also provided by former Clash singer/guitarist, Mick Jones, who adds clarity from one section of the story to the next that is not always clear within the song lyrics and titles themselves. While the narration may become less necessary upon repeated listening, it provides information that makes the story clearer the first few times through it.  Musically, the melodies that appear throughout the album are probably the most engaging, overall, since 2002’s Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots or 2006’s At War with the Mystics, sometimes soft, sentimental, and moving, other times a collage of noise or textures to represent events within the plot or between sections of the story. Lyrically, Coyne strives for the gentle honesty of songs from 1999’s The Soft Bulletin and many of the band’s best ballads from the past 20 years but is slightly less successfully consistent. Some verses and lines of lyrics directly reference the narrative at hand while other lines are broader and more open to interpretation within or outside of the story, adding needed versatility and depth to the album and especially its most emotional moments, such as “The Sparrow”, “All for the Love of the City”, and “Mouth of the King”.

One might be tempted to say King’s Mouth, as a narrative based concept album, is closer in style to Pink Floyd than Radiohead, but elements of both, along with many, many others, can be heard in the album’s 12 songs, and while each track may not be quite as strong as the one before or after it, the album does work well as a piece, especially with access to the songs’ printed lyrics, and the experience of playing it straight through is stronger and more consistent than much of what the Lips have released for several years. It may not win over completely new listeners, but King’s Mouth is more likely to interest older fans who have not kept up with things in the post-Yoshimi years and especially those who cherish that album and the masterpiece that is The Soft Bulletin the most of all.