Tag Archives: the flaming lips

#1188: The Flaming Lips – She Don’t Use Jelly

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The first time The Flaming Lips came into my consciousness was around the time that At War with the Mystics was their “new” album that was going to be released soon. Guess that places us in 2006. The video for ‘The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song’ was a regular in the mornings on MTV2. It was a strange video. It was a strange song. But I dug it. To the 11-year-old child I was, it scratched that weird internal itch that I think all young ones have at that age. Because there was this hype for The Flaming Lips going around, their older videos would be played on the channel too. Through this, it’s how I came to know songs like ‘Race for the Prize’, ‘Fight Test’, ‘Do You Realize??’, and today’s featured track ‘She Don’t Use Jelly’.

I was a younger, foolish kid back when I saw the video for ‘Jelly’ for the first time, and I think I cared more about appearances than the music. The first thought I had was how different Wayne Coyne looked compared to all the other videos I’d seen him in. In fact, the whole band looked completely unrecognizable. It appeared to be a much older music video than than the ones for the songs from Bulletin and Yoshimi, so obviously they were younger. They just also happened to look like completely different people. Plus, there appeared to be this other person in the band that by 2006 was not in there anymore. I had a lot of research to do. The track just seemed weird to me. The combination of the audio with the visuals, my little brain couldn’t handle it. I got over that bridge eventually.

The Flaming Lips could have easily been known as the band that did this one song. and then dipped, never to be heard from again. As we all know, they went on to do great things which I think we’re all very grateful for. But there are a lot of one-hit wonders who have worst tracks than this one. ‘She Don’t Use Jelly’ is about three kooky characters, two girls, one guy, all described in three respective verses, who use unusual objects for the completely wrong purposes. There’s choruses per se. Where the choruses would usually be are instead replaced by the crunching guitar riff and loopy slide guitar refrain, which also start the track off. And I like Coyne’s vocal in this too, all bare and untampered with. He’s not the strongest singer, but he gives it feeling, even if the lyrics aren’t meant to be taken all seriously.

#649: The Flaming Lips – It Overtakes Me

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At War with the Mystics is the first Flaming Lips album I was properly alive and kicking for around the time of its release. I was eleven watching MTV2 almost every morning and the video for ‘The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song’ was showing very frequently. The song is all right. A bland opinion that I hold to this day. ‘The WAND’ followed some time after. While that one has a great groove to it, I hold that in the same regard as I do the ‘YYY Song’. Neither of them are bad though, and I can still dig them even 13 years on.

However, the track that really grabbed me from the album was ‘It Overtakes Me’. Not that I went out and actually bought the album. Actually I was either in bed or the living room and this advert for Becks beer came on. It was this weird stop-motion animation where these models were dancing to a thick bassline and an almighty groove. I later found out that it was the song that you see in the title. I’ll put that advert below just so you can all witness my impressive descriptive skills.

So ‘It Overtakes Me’ is the seventh track on At War with the Mystics. On the album itself, it’s merged with an almost-four minute instrumental entitled ‘The Stars Are So Big… I Am So Small… Do I Stand a Chance?’. I’m not too big a fan of that, but luckily the main song was edited to remove that section on its own EP and is the version you can listen to above. I might just link the instrumental at the bottom too.

As I said earlier, ‘It Overtakes Me’ is dominated by this thick and heavy bassline that’s at the forefront of the mix and is pretty much the melodic centre of the whole composition. While that bass is going on, Wayne Coyne sings about how insignificant and small he seems to be in this big wide world (a theme he tends to explore in the group’s music) and how the fact that we’re all on this sphere floating in space overwhelms him. It’s not all emotional though. There are some twinkling keyboard melodies, dramatic backing vocals, loose moments when a bandmember will yell out ‘Yeah’ in the midst of everything….. There’s a point where a vocal slowly transforms from a chipmunk-like pitch to a giant-like bellow too. It’s a very fun listen for something that can cause an existential crisis for some people.

My iPod #367: The Flaming Lips – Fight Test

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Honestly, I only listened to this once and I liked the melody enough that I thought it would be nice to hear it whenever I wanted to. Even though the vocal melody was taken from a Cat Stevens song, something that The Flaming Lips have admitted to and felt regret over. But it’s fiiiine, the song still exists so it’s all good.

“Fight Test” begins Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, The Flaming Lips first album of the 21st century and their first after their success gained with The Soft Bulletin. Appropriately introduced by a sample (“The test begins….. NOW”) the track is led by a fuzzy bassline which all the other instruments seem to revolve around and Wayne Coyne sings to you about how life is a struggle and that when a time comes we must be ready to face it head on and, well, fight.

Good stuff.