LaRM day 152 (Flaming Lips-Fleet Foxes)

Possibly the lowest point of the Flaming Lips career so far has been their collaboration with various mates to remake Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon in its entirety, released in 2010.  Now, if a self-indulgent, smug, self-satisfied indie band is going to cover a record then they might as well cover the most self-indulgent, smuggest and most self-satisfied record ever made.  And yet, the Flaming Lips and Stardeath with the White Dwarfs (I mean, really...) manage to come up with what I can only describe as the most hapless, tedious, and incompetent attempt at cover versions I've ever heard.  I have no problem with taking the record apart, no problem with making something totally different (that's really the secret to the best covers after all), but what I do have a problem with is making it clear that you think that you're the spiritual successors to something that you can't even begin to approach actually being able to do yourself.  In amongst the cack-handed performances (and again, I can't help but think that the point at which Mercury Rev realised it might be worth learning to play as the point at which the two bands parted ways forever) and utterly imagination-free rewrites are some hints of something better, but they're only hints.  It's a waste of time, it's the final proof that the Flaming Lips are truly an empty vessel, yet the album's biggest crime by far is in making the original Dark Side of the Moon seem like a work of stunning genius because it's a hundred million times better than this awful doped-up student joke.

A slight improvement, if only because of its enforced diversity, is this year's Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends (godawful title though, no?).  Essentially an album designed for guest appearances (it's actually a compilation of collaborative EP tracks), it still carries all the irritating hyperactivity of other Flaming Lips albums but bearing in mind that you end up listening to it in light of who guests on which song, it isn't just another trip into the surprisingly uninteresting mind of Wayne Coyne.  There are one or tunes that hark back to the time when the Flaming Lips weren't such an indie cabaret act (the Tame Impala guester 'Children of the Moon' is really pretty good for instance).  The majority of it is OK at best, dreadful at worst (sludgy noisefest opener '2012 (You Must Be Upgraded)' with Kesha is pretty abhorent) but overall, by the Flaming Lips recent standards, Heady Fwends really isn't that awful a record.  The biggest problem lies often with the guest star - for instance, the fuzzy, swampy Nick Cave starring 'You, Man? Human???' really only serves to remind you how much better Cave's Grinderman albums are than this.  But in any event, there's enough on the album to be optimistic about, and as the band's excessive marketing ploys (EPs released in real human skulls, vinyl pressed with guest stars blood samples, etc) get more absurd, so too does their critical stock plummet and it may be that when strapped for cash and attention they may get back to bothering to write a song or two once in a while.

What can you say about the Fleet Foxes? It's all very pleasant? A bit Americana, a bit of the Band in there, a bit ironic 70's style classic songwriting-y? A bit pastoral? Crafted? Autumnal? Nostalgic? Wistful? Heavily bearded?  All of those, and that's about the size of it. Debut EP Sun Giant (2008) is the weakest demonstration of all those qualities that define the band, but it does have gently persuasive mainstay 'Mykonos' on it.  It's telling that the songs on Sun Giant were recorded after the songs that were contained on the debut self-titled album which was released later the same year, because it implies diminishing returns because the album is much better.  Again, that sound of serious young men with fixations on the American musical past and growing massive beards is in full force (and has really become something of a stereotype now. Someone could usefully remove a substantial number of them and nobody would notice. You could start with that talent vacuum Justin Vernon) but the album really is very charming and although if in the wrong mood you might need matchsticks to keep your eyes open, in the right mood it's a deeply involving, warm record with some songs that sound like they've come directly from the past.  The seasonal beauty of 'White Winter Hymnal' is an obvious highpoint, but the album is full of precious bits of antique songwriting and delivery and the whole thing feels like it's been expertly hewn out of solid wood.

Less instinctively easy to love, but actually considerably better is follow-up Helplessness Blues (2011).  The arcane references in Robin Pecknold's lyrics are more obscure than ever, but his rustic vocals are more endearing.  The production is clearer, which means that the record sounds less warm, but the songs themselves are much denser and involved.  In fact there's some fabulous stuff on Helplessness Blues (not least the rather awkward but very successfully instrumental experimentation of 'Bedouin Dress'), and although some tunes may not work their way directly into your skull in the listening to them they are really special.  It's a complicated album, stuck in some ways between various posts, not least a seemingly conflicting desire to stay steadfastly traditional and to use modern recording tricks at odds with the approach.  There are low moments but nothing as dud as 'Oliver James' from the debut album and the quality really is high throughout.  Again, if you're not in the mood you'll happily turn it off, but as an exercise in crafted retrospection (the cover is like any number of psych-folk albums from the late 60's) it really is pretty much without parallel.