The Boston Globe
August 20, 1999
Brain train
Flaming Lips, Robyn Hitchcock, Sebadoh, Cornelius, And Iqu Join To Bring Smart Pop To Town
by Jim Sullivan
The multiband tour, which stops at The Roxy tonight, goes under the heady tag of "The First International Music Against Brain Degeneration Revue" and, indeed, it offers a smarter, more complex brand of contemporary music than you might find on, say, "The Family Values" tour or at the "Ozzfest". This anti-brain-degeneration package -- with the veteran Oklahoma-based band Flaming Lips at the top of the bill, followed by former Massachusetts and now West Coast Lo-Fi kings Sebadoh, English singer-songwriter-guitarist Robyn Hitchcock, Japanese popster Cornelius (a.k.a. Keigo Oyamada), and Iqu -- should challenge and entertain.
"It is all stuff that you would want to listen to," explains Hitchcock, "not just music to crash your car to. It gets your attention and Wayne [Coyne of The Lips] makes a point before the show each night to the audience that you just let your mind go, and that your brain will grow if you exercise it. That might sound too educational; it actually is a bit more fun than it sounds."
The tour also has a psychedelic bent to it. Which, these days, might be defined as...
"Music that could have been made on drugs," offers Lips singer-guitarist Coyne. Operative word: could. "When I think of psychedelic I think of Jimi Hendrix and The Grateful Dead, but I come from the old school. I do see how a lot of young people when you say 'psychedelic' they just mean stuff that isn't Dance or Rap."
Drugs may or may not play a part in the creation of psychedelic music, which could be said for music in general or virtually any art form that reaches beyond the norm. Musically, speaking Neo-Psychedelia is about sonic exploration, off-center twists on conventional Rock and Blues riffs, unorthodox instruments coloring the mix. It's about expansiveness, about dreamscapes, about music as open-ended and adventurous. This is where Coyne and his mates, drummer-turned keyboardist and guitarist Steven Drozd and bassist Michael Ivins, live. (Longtime guitarist Ronald Jones recently left; the drums, played by Drozd are on tape.) As evidenced by their latest effort, the stellar The Soft Bulletin, The Flaming Lips, in their 15th year, make music that has warmth and uplift, even if it traverses some fairly gnarly territory. There may even be a concept.
"I don't think there was one by design," says Coyne, "even though the songs tie in nicely. I can see they are all talking about the same thing and one sort of bookends the other. The themes involved are of love and death and isolation and desperation, yourself-versus-the-universe type of thing." Which is not to say the mundane doesn't come into play. "Buggin'" concerns the summer nuisance of mosquitoes.
The Flaming Lips' music has little to do with the wave of Hard Rock and Metal out there -- "A lot of people would prefer nothing more than to be bludgeoned to death," says Coyne -- and the band favors movement and variety over the course of an album. "People forget that adults actually like variety," Coyne says.
To The Flaming Lips, notions of orchestration and sophistication are not bad things. Coyne likes the idea of a big, dense sound that can be "soft and loud at the same time," and, "with the right movements behind some of the lyrics you really do get this sense of hope, this triumphant-ness." The Soft Bulletin, with its frequent piano-based melodies, has a sense of quiet grandeur.
"These things that I do," says Coyne, "I realize sometimes hit people as being absurd or strange, sometimes just plain unwanted, really. We take our lumps as they come and proceed on. I just think this monster that is musical evolution has to go somewhere.... I figure that I am making my contribution the best I can. I look at it this way: the music industry, and the music evolution, is like a giant whale and I am just a little flea on the back of it, flying through the ocean. I try to place myself somewhere where I can best position myself to have the most impact."
Occasionally, The Lips drift into the mainstream -- they had a hit with "She Don't Use Jelly" in 1994 -- but it always comes as a shock. "We're never prepared to have it," says Coyne. "Sometimes, the momentum builds. I really do want to reach as big an audience as we can, and at the same time, I want to reach them with what I want to say [as] opposed to with what they want to hear. What people want to hear is always changing and we are always changing. Sometimes, the spheres collide, naturally, accidentally. It's hard to tell if it's going to be like that horrible train accident in India or whether they just melt into each other.
"We just do what we would like to do," Coyne adds, "and hope that we can convince people it's hip regardless, even if it is not. Being ahead of the curve is something...well, you don't actually know what a curve is."
Like Coyne, Robyn Hitchcock, once of The Soft Boys and Egyptians, now touring solo, probably has no idea of a curve either. He has long been used to swimming in a peculiar pool of his own design. A sharp Pop songwriter, weaned on Bob Dylan and Syd Barrett (of the early Pink Floyd), Hitchcock favors odd, yet affecting, lyrical metaphors, and a wide-ranging musical palette that runs from Folk to Rock. He also likes insect songs. "Antwoman" is the offering on Hitchcock's latest CD, Jewels for Sophia, his strongest effort in years.
But what about the insects? "You see people watching baseball or football in bars all over the world," Hitchcock says, "and you could be looking at photographs of ants. I know people identify with sports figures; I guess I am the exception. But I find insects incredible; there is a danger about them. It is a visual thing too. I write about things I like the look of and less about computers and sports."
On Jewels for Sophia, where Hitchcock is joined by guests like R.E.M.'s Peter Buck, former Bostonian Jon Brion, and ex-Soft Boy Kimberley Rew, there is a mix of soft and hard, pensive and full-tilt with wit and whimsy informing most everything. "I have managed to get my personality on there," says Hitchcock, "but I think it is the most comforting sound we have put out in the last 10 years. The latest albums have all been quite somber. I think this is like me staring out over the lake, shaking my hand over a glass of wine during twilight. It may be a bit more life-affirming."
There are some dark passages. The disc starts off with "Mexican God", with Hitchcock singing "Pray for amnesia to finish you off/This is the evil I wished on so many/Time will destroy you like a Mexican God" and "The horror of you floats so close to my window/At least when I did, your memory will too". By the end of the song, Hitchcock is on the grill, secure "at the end of your rod".
"I like crawling through a deep tunnel before emerging into a dome of a bright strange loft," Hitchcock offers, of the song and its placement. "It took a very long time to organize the placement."
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