OK, I know I'm late on this, but the Flaming Lips CD is amazing.

[Pale Blue Dot]

"Yoshimi vs. The Pink Robots". I put off listening to this for a long time, thinking that it would be a little too...weird... for my tastes, but it is really terrific. Yes, it's a little weird, but it's also an incredibly catchy collection of intelligent pop songs. I give it ****!

[Enraged_Ape]

1. "Fight Test" is one of the greatest songs of all time

Even though the melody was pretty much cribbed from Cat Stevens ("Father and Son", which is also, IMHO, a classic). I consider the Flaming Lips to be the Supertramp of our generation, and I sincerely mean that in a good way.

[Screaming Lord Byron]

2. The Soft Bulletin is even better.

Look it up in the dictionary under the term 'embarassment of riches'

[XNASA]

3. You got that right, SLB.

"The Soft Bulletin" is a masterpiece.

"Is it overwhelming
to use a crane to crush a fly?
It's a good time for Superman
to lift the sun into the sky"

[RandomKoolzip]

4. I'm not crazy about their filler, but..

The last two Flaming Lips albums featured one song each which made me cry the first time I heard them ("Race for the Prize" and "Fight Test.") Where Wayne Coyne suddenly located this font of poignancy is a total head-scratcher. Certainly nothing else in the Lips's back catalogue suggested he'd become this wizened purveyor of emotionalism.

I can't listen to "Fight Test" without tearing up. There are only a handful of songs from the last decade which have this effect on me.

Now if only they'd cut back on the sampled percussion a bit and let Drozd bash the skins more, you could make a strong case for them being fuckin' awesome. Drozd is one of the best Bonham-style drummers in the world; why he'd want dinky trip-hop sampled whomp-wack on the albums he plays on is another head-scratcher.....