Transmissions From The Satellite Heart

This album was the first available fruit of the new line-up for the Flaming Lips. The band had been together for about a year, and this album shows that this is now probably the most cohesive incarnation the Flaming Lips has seen. One of the most striking things about this album is the drumming. The Flaming Lips have always had good drummers but Steven Drozd is truly great. I don't know if the drum sound is due to him or producer/engineer Keith Cleversley but it is magnificent. That aside the crisp attack of his playing is fantastic and brings a new power to the Lips sound. When you combine that with Wayne's glorious sense of melody and Mike's perfectly complementary bass playing and then ADD the sheer genius of Ronald Jones' guitar playing you have something undeniably special. The great thing is that Ron doesn't try to emulate the otherworldness of Jon Donahue but brings his own noises to the band and this breathes new life into the sound. Having new blood to work with quite clearly inspired the songwriting and there are some classics here.

The album has a more poppy sound than before - it's a kind of frazzled pop-rock with added sound effects thing and more than one melody usually. The first song Turn It On is no exception - it has about six different hooks in it, not least the chorus - with it's sort of stomp along pop-rock feel. It's a marvellous opener and it sets up the mood for the rest of the album wonderfully. From here on in it's a gentle rollercoaster ride through upbeat noisy but gentle songs and laidback beautifully fragile sounding songs.

In short, it's an incredibly happy and uplifting album. Songs like Chewin' The Apple of Yer Eye are quite quite restful, and most beautiful. The distant longing sound of the cover song `Plastic Jesus' is quite marvellously set against the surging not-quite anger (more displeasure) of When Yer Twenty-Two, before leading into another of those perfect album closers that the Lips do so well with Slow Nerve Action - a totally cool laidback drawl of a song with a woozy riff. What a marvellous reasurance that the Lips are alive and well, and a sign of things to come.