For a moment, it seemed like the Flaming Lips were everywhere. With mainstream success in front of them, at the later point of an already long and respectable career, they would have had every right to just lock in and continue to replicate their earlier success, but they did not. The Flaming Lips continued to push ahead and showed themselves to be more inventive than ever. Embryonic, their last LP (not counting a series of EPs and collaborative releases) was a psychedelic epic trading the earlier simplicity of songs like “Do You Realize,” for something darker, more complex and definitely weirder. It established that this band still had something interesting left in them, and with the release of The Terror, they have confirmed that they remain in the midst of a very fruitful period.
The Terror is, at first, difficult to approach. 55 minutes of sprawling songs that are more textural droning pieces then pop songs with discernible hooks and choruses. “You Lust,” which appears early in the record, is emblematic of this. A droning track with intermittent synth whooshes and enigmatic chanting, it sounds like a transmission from purgatory. This sets the tone for the rest of the record.
Throughout The Terror, the Lips are more interested in creating sonic landscapes, sometimes suffocating and consistently darker than previous efforts. There are no songs in the vein of “Do You Realize,” or “Race for the Prize,” and definitely nothing like that song about giraffes they once did. It is not that they are no longer capable of these types of songs, they are, and the non-album “Sun Blows Up Today,” a bouncy and jubilant ode to the end of the world, demonstrates this capability well. However, this album is after something very different, and represents more of a unified statement than a collection of singles.
Wayne Coyne, the most immediately recognizable member of the band, takes a decided backseat to the instrumental arrangements written by chief song writer Steven Drozd. Coyne’s presence is felt as spectral falsetto, lost in space, seemingly searching for contact, for something to latch onto. This element of searching for a way out is central to the record. Later tracks like “You Are Alone” with its echoing questioning refrain brings this theme to the forefront.
The last third reflects a growing frustration and dread as the search for a way out becomes possibly interminable. “Butterfly, How Long It Takes to Die” introduces a low end that seems to fill these remaining songs with a vague menace. It is also at this point that a percussive element, mostly absent from the first part of the record returns, returns. This slowly builds through the last few songs until an echoing drum returns to close out the record.
By the time we reach the end, “Always There, In Our Hearts,” it is apparent this album is not offering a hopeful way out. It only offers catharsis, in the aforementioned reentry of percussion. This return is thrilling but tinged with menace. However, the angular guitar signals that this build up at least led somewhere. And perhaps, if the album droned out to the end, that would have been fundamentally more unsettling. Ending as it does, The Terror, in its way, offers a certain hope that the nameless menace this album evokes at every point will finally show itself, will finally present itself as something to be overcome.
The Terror stoically plunges itself into these dark spaces, it is a continued and active engagement with them. This is where the album succeeds. This album requires an investment of time and attention to see how it unfolds, to see how everything connects. It is something refreshingly new from a group who has been around for some time. It is the creation of a sort of headspace, a commitment to following out a certain idea and tone through to its logical conclusion. Of course, since this is the Flaming Lips, these songs are done artfully and the experiment succeeds. These textural songs, evoking a Martian landscape, and dark as they are, yield a certain beauty.
Grade: A
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