Daveportivo's Cultural Evaluation Facility

So I guess Wayne Coyne must be riding high after winning my Album of the decade award for the 1990s over OK Computer...okay just joking, just making sure you were paying attention. No aside from my critical praise there are high expectations for the forth coming Lips album, because lets face it At War With The Mystics was a bit hit and miss. It wasn't close to being a bad album, and it was a hell of alot of fun but you kind of expect more than just a bit of fun from a Flaming Lips record. You expect something big, something glorious, something shimmering and most of all something beautiful. So there is certainly some expectancy for the Lips to get serious again, actually serious isn't quite the word when it comes to the Lips but you know what I mean.

Silver Trembling Hands certainly is big and it sure as hell is shimmering so they're at least half way where they need to be. It comes like an ethereal day dream or that's how those of us not familar with mind bending drugs would see it, to everyone else this is one hell of a spacey trip. Silver Trembling Hands is a track of big shiny textures, apeish coos and the chimes and burst of symbols, it's a lucid and hypnotic soundscape. The chorus feels like it comes floating in of a chariot of clouds as Coyne croons "When She's High". For a track that sounds so georgeous and lite its surprisingly driven by a thick bass line and the continous thud of the bass pedal. Lyrically Coyne is in full trippy hippy mode with another narrative about a girl who puts diamonds in her forehead, watches Jaguars and plays with insects, well I suppose that's abit more grounded than Yoshimi battling Pink Robots. Whether you can get your head around the imagery of the Flaming Lips or not this is what we all wanted most a beautiful atomspheric track of the highest order. Just incase you were worried it doesn't look like Wayne Coyne's career defining purple patch is going to come to an end anytime soon.