A collection of quotes from The Flaming Lips frontman about his band’s new album.
Want more opinions? Here’s what the critics are saying…
Coyne On The Album Title
“Frankly, at first it was not clear what to call it.
When you make music, you always seek words and titles suggestive enough to take the listener to the world you have just created. Initially, we had only a short, untitled instrumental called “Stuff”. We ended up nicknaming it “Oczy Mlody”. We did not know yet that it would be the first piece of our future album, but the suite was simpler. Sometimes, a single title can give the tone of the album.”
Coyne on Oczy Mlody As A Concept Album
“We can describe this new album as a concept album, it’s true.
On this record we had an album title, a piece that bore the same name, and similar themes in several tracks.
As a critic, you can of course perceive all this as a concept album, but when you build the album, when you compose it, you never see things like that. It’s much more subtle. For “Oczy Mlody”, we really wanted to go towards this idea of the concept album. We wanted to create a new world.”
Coyne On Making The Album Cohesive
Coyne On Album Packaging
Coyne On Recording Oczy Mlody
Coyne On Lyric Writing
“In some of these songs, we have literally just gibberish going, and we know we have emotional markers within the melody, and you could almost say anything, and it would have the same impact or be the same mood. And that sometimes is the free ticket: Now say outrageous things. I wanted it to feel like an emotional outburst. Lyrics can mess up a song. You can want to sing along, and sometimes they’re just — not that they’re dumb. I mean, I sing along with Journey songs all the time, because they’re so dumb that it doesn’t matter. But I have trouble with songs that are trying to say something, and then you just feel awkward about the whole thing.
With “Kill your rock ’n’ roll,” those types of lyrics make you say: “Why did you say that? What do you mean?” I don’t have an answer. I just like that idea.”
Coyne on Musical Arrangements
Coyne On Musical Influences
Coyne On Mystery, Reinvention And The Influence Of Rap
Coyne On Whimsy
“’Wacky’ isn’t such a compliment. And ‘jokey’ isn’t a compliment. But whimsical, to me, has character to it. Like Charles Dickens or “Alice in Wonderland,” there’s a sense that it is fantasy, but it’s rooted in childlike desire. The best stuff we’ve done has whimsicalness about it, for sure. The boring stuff, I don’t think does.
Music needs to have these elements in it, or it doesn’t fire up all the little triggers in your mind. Sometimes with our music, I throw in curse words, [expletive] this and [expletive] that, because it charges up a different piece of your brain.”
Coyne On Childlike Purity
Coyne On Drugs
“People have said that [ayahuasca is] not that intense, like acid. Whenever I would do acid, which was the late Seventies, it would just be too long for me. After a couple hours, I’d be like, “Ah, that was fun,” and then the long, long … my mind just goes to too much worry. But [with ayahuasca] I thought, “Well, okay,” I’d sort of let go some of fear of going insane or whatever. I thought, “Eh, I’m old, if I go insane, I’ll probably get over it.” This was two summers ago. We were doing stuff with Miley that ended up on her Dead Petz record.
Because it’s in this absolutely controlled environment, and you put your trust in … they say ‘shaman,’ but that’s a hokey word. He’s aware of the levels that the drug is having. He’s always going around. By singing the songs, he can judge your reaction to it and how much you’re fighting and struggling. He lets you figure out on your own how much you can dissolve into it. I was thinking, “I’m not sure if I feel anything” and he was doing these little rhythmic things [snaps fingers] and it started to do the echo, and he could tell I was liking it. Everything about it just made absolute sense to me. Mushrooms have that effect, where it starts making absolute sense on such a deep level, and that’s a good trip.
We were with Miley and with a couple of friends, and we all did this at her house. I think we’d do it again in the same sort of way, if we’re with some cool people, and we’re all in the same boat. I think we all collectively were like, “We’re not leaving the house, we’re locked in here for 12 hours with our animals and this guy and our friends.”
Coyne on Extremes
Coyne On Oczy Mlody’s Relationship To The Current Political Landscape
“Our music isn’t about that. I remember the year my father died. I had no idea what happened in music or politics, because it didn’t matter. It didn’t have impact on the real life that you have to live. And it does matter what Donald Trump says, but if you’re really immersed in the struggle and the pain of life, those things just don’t matter to you. So I try to go to that area, and say, “If you really need Flaming Lips music, if it can help you, you’re beyond caring about who the president is, or what scandal is going on between Kanye and the Kardashians.
I am caught up in it, absolutely, in my everyday frustrations. But in our music, we’ve tried to say, this is deeper than that. Four years from now, Donald Trump will be done, and this music will still be there.”
Coyne On Oczy Mlody In The Current Musical Landscape
Coyne On Miley Cyrus
Coyne On “We A Famly”
Coyne On Meeting A$AP Rocky
Coyne On His Critics
“You do your coolest stuff when you’re not so serious because it doesn’t matter that much. And it’s great to have instant feedback all the time, whether it’s good or bad. You can tune in or tune out as much as you want. It’s just there, flowing, which is wonderful.
If you’re flying along, having everything you do greeted by so much love and success, then suddenly you’re confronted by someone saying, ‘Fuck you! I hate what you do!’ – it can be like getting slapped in the face.
I can only say, by comparison, the things that happen to me are nothing. I’m not in that flow. Even when things are going well for us, we’re always worried. Miley and Ke$ha are not – and I’ve definitely learned more being around them than they would from me. Luckily, the mountain of opinion out there mostly encourages us to keep doing what we’re doing. When it’s not, I can laugh at it most of the time.”
Coyne On Memories And Music
Coyne On Metting Reggie Watts
Coyne On ‘There Should Be Unicorns’
Coyne On Oczy Mlody Tour Plans