![]() There’s “She Is Death” for you, a song that foreshadows the band’s future sound. “Godzilla Flick” is this album’s “Do You Realize?,” a bittersweet indie-rock ballad that doles out saddening lines such as “People that you love,/Are never going to say hello again/And it’s only in the movies.” Maybe you really are clamoring for something psychedelic. ![]() While much of the album is noisy , there are songs where The Flaming Lips are subtle, introspective and emotional. Hear It Is is not just a one-trick pony whose only novelty comes from the guitar feedbacks, however. “Jesus Shootin’ Heroin” is a 7 minute long country rock ballad that features a couple heavy metal breakdowns. “Charlie Manson Blues” adds sudden dissonant guitar sections and random hoots. Opener “With You” jumps between a simple, low key acoustic guitar ballad and a noise-rock guitar storm. Instead of using trippy after effects, Flaming Lips throws in dissonant guitars chords to stir things up. Even in their punk phase, the Flaming Lips still strive to be weird. It sounds different, but we are talking about the Flaming Lips here. “Unplugged,” “Man From Pakistan” and the cover of “Summertime Blues” proves that it takes more than yelling like a hooligan and playing guitars loud to make compelling music.ĭon’t dismiss Hear It Is completely, though. You aren’t going to find much poignancy on here, and you’ll even find some duds. Instead, we get boisterous punk music and the occasional country ballad. Absent on their debut album Hear It Is are the psychedelic sounds, prog-rock song structures and Wayne Coyne’s signature crackling, yet charming, voice. Initial CD versions of the album included the self-titled EP, while later pressings only added an enthusiastic fuzz-take of Eddie Cochran-via- Blue Cheer's "Summertime Blues.Before The Soft Bulletin, “She Don’t Use Jelly” or the 90’s, The Flaming Lips used to rock. Consider the blunt imagery of "Jesus Shootin' Heroin" or the clearly humorous yells and climax of "Charlie Manson Blues" as two examples of many. Texas psych types like the 13th Floor Elevators and the Red Krayola were clear forebears - one can easily imagine Roky Erickson coming up with shaggy dog stories and music for the likes of "Trains, Brains and Rain." The group's own uniqueness comes through, though. ![]() If anybody was kin at the time, it would be the Meat Puppets, with perhaps a little less interest in high lonesome sounds. Throughout Hear It Is, there's a gleeful "try what works" approach that would only become stronger later - the band may have been punk-inspired and birthed, but Coyne and company drew on everything from country & western to classic rock crunch and more there are even some clear early goth rock touches. The gentle acoustic strumming that starts the album on "With You" or the steady pace and mournful singing on "Godzilla Flick" shows that subtlety was as much a part of the game as stomping, fried electric guitar insanity. It isn't as completely discontinuous as might be thought, though - Coyne's vision was already distinctly gone, in ways that most bands would kill for. Instead, it's raunchy bar-band-gone-insane fun or calmer but not too wracked ruminations from Coyne, with music to match. No swirling orchestral parts, no Beach Boys-on-Mars homages, even Wayne Coyne's immediately recognizable cracked fracture of a voice isn't present. ![]() Hearing Hear It Is years later, after all the band had done up to the new century, makes for an almost surreal experience. ![]()
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