Clouds Taste Metallic

I'm having a bit of a rest this week, but rather than neglect The Album Wall entirely, I thought I'd take this opportunity to share with you some blog posts from the past. For my final post of the week, I thought I'd air out my thoughts on Clouds Taste Metallic by The Flaming Lips. These words originally appeared on my last.fm journal, back in October '06:

My Flaming Lips collection started in the summer of 2005 with what was then their latest album, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. Do You Realize?? became my anthem of the summer, and I hailed the album as a classic.

However, that didn't prepare me for the next 'Lips album I would get.

Fast-forward to December of the same year, and as the sun goes down for winter, I browse eBay looking for one last kick before the Christmas haul.

What I ended up with was Clouds Taste Metallic. Considering I only paid about £3 for it, I couldn't have made a better choice.

Of course, this album's sound is radically different from Yoshimi. It is from the band's nuttier days, and contains such bizarre wonders as This Here Giraffe and seasonal oddity Christmas at the Zoo, in which Wayne Coyne goes to the zoo on a snowless Christmas Eve and opens all of the cages. Strangely, the animals are reluctant to leave.

The bizarre themes (including watermelon guns, thunderstruck postmen, and a place called Brainville where they 'enlarge your space') are the album's beating heart, while the trippy sounds are the icing on the cake.

Highlights include opener The Abandoned Hospital Ship, with its soaring solo, Kim's Watermelon Gun (love the insane riff), They Punctured My Yolk, which details a couple of astronauts in love who are torn apart when only one of them is chosen to go on the mission, and the uplifting closer Bad Days, encouraging us all to sleep in more.

CTM is highly recommended, but be prepared for a surprise if you started with Yoshimi... or The Soft Bulletin. It sounds very different, but in a good way. As Amazon put it, 'this isn't music to take drugs to, the music is the drug'.

'You gotta sleep late when you can,

And all your bad days will end!'