Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.These two mammoth retrospectives of the Flaming Lips' early work – one a triple-disc set covering their first three albums, the other focusing on their pivotal In a Priest Driven Ambulance LP, swollen with demos and out-takes – confirm them as closet prog-rockers spurred to action by the American hardcore punk boom of the early Eighties. A bit like an American XTC, as it were, with a headful of songs about UFOs, drug culture, slacker inertia and religious scepticism, and a penchant for power-chord riffing, musique concrète collaging and psychedelic effects. It's a heady mix which reaches an apogée on the Jesus Egg set, the point at which future Mercury Rev frontman Jonathan Donahue joined the Oklahoma weirdos. To those who know the Lips only through this year's Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots, these early works will sound a touch crude, but there's a philosophical inclination that, even on their 1986 debut Hear It Is, broached big questions with engaging straightforwardness: "Never really understood religions/Except it seems a good reason to kill/Everybody's got their own conceptions/And you know, they always will".
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments