Due to high expectations... The Flaming Lips are

Providing Needles For Your Balloons..

Mid 1994 this EP sneaked out of Warner Bros US as a limited edition. The Flaming Lips had released an album for the last two years and the full title suggests that they were aware that people were expecting a new one! This, however, is a collection of stuff from the vaults so to speak - featuring only recordings made by the (then) current incarnation of the band though.

It begins with Bad Days which is the most recent song on the EP - it was later featured on the Batman Forever soundtrack, and remixed slightly for the Clouds taste metallic album. So, chances are you heard it already. It's really cool, basically a classic pop song and the most commercial thing they ever ended up making by this point. It stomps along in a bouncy little way, with some brilliant breaks and it's just POP! Check that 'fake uplift chorus bit' - wonderful....

Track 2 is Jets Part 2 (My Two Days As An Ambulance Driver). This has the best drum pattern ever on it and really cool noisy guitar that is not at all abrasive. The song is obviously about the same thing as Jets with the lyrics detailing something about making a mess in the ambulance.... A really cool slightly poppy song that is great to mumble along with. Nice.

Track 3 is the Flaming Lips contribution to the Suicide tribute album - it's Ice Drummer - and is one of the best things they have done. Okay they didn't write it but it really is fantastic and as usual their midas touch with covers has transformed it into a masterpiece (although it was pretty damn good to start with).

The next song is by now legendary. Put The Waterbug In the Policeman's Ear is a battered glory - from the wobbly tape introduction from Wayne, explaining the story, to the violin sounding guitar playing of Ronald and Wayne's withered sounding cracked voice. The quality of the recording is rock bottom, but it only serves to add to the atmosphere here and this is a quite exquisite song - very changed from the early live performances when Steven would play the guitar and not the piano...

From here we launch into three tracks recorded at a Lips instore performance around about Christmas 1993. Wayne's voice was a little off on this day, but they sound great nontheless. Chewin' The Apple Of Yer Eye is first here and it's nice to hear this gem being performed live for once. After that is a fantastic (and I mean ace) cover of Smog's (i.e. Bill Callahan's) Chosen One. This song always was beautiful, bu the Lips turn it into one of the most heartfelt tales of lost love in the universe. In a darkened room late at night this can bring a person close to tears. The finale of this little piece of a performance is Little Drummer Boy. Quite how you take a Christmas carol and make it sound like the Flaming Lips wrote it is beyond me, but they do it. Wayne doesn't know the last verse and makes a joke, throws in a line about baby Jesus floating somewhere outside and it's just generally cool to hear them indulging the audience this way. We leave Northern Lights Minneapolis with Wayne saying, `Merry Christmas Everyone'.....

The last track is a marked contrast - the legend on the sleeve tagged alongside this song reads `Ronald is human beatbox'. What this means is this radio performance of Slow Nerve Action features screaming guitar noise, screaming people and the heaviest percussion sounds. It's mental but retains it's cool. There's also a really groovy instrumental thing tagged onto the end (after a short commentary by Wayne et al). This is too short because it's so good - it sounds kind of mechanical but really sooothing and nice - known to the band as Steven's Weird Thing, and later used to great effect on Zaireeka...

A perfect way to end a not perfect but notheless wonderful collection of songs which have to make this yet another classic Lips release. If you see one, buy it.