Oklahoma psychedelic rock behemoths the Flaming Lips have aged to be the envy of almost every artist within the genre, for reasons that vary between flawless albums like Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots and the fact that the band has stayed in the mainstream eye for over 25 years. Given the Flaming Lips’ ties to neighboring Oklahoma City, they have made Dallas a frequent tour stop since their humble beginnings, but Monday saw the announcement of perhaps one of the band’s most special local performances yet.
“We are thrilled to bring this unique experience to the Meyerson and share a once-in-a-lifetime concert with Dallas." — Dallas Symphony Orchestra CEO Kim Noltemy
On Sunday, April 19, the Flaming Lips will perform their seminal 1999 full-length The Soft Bulletin at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra.
“Orchestral music pairs beautifully with the kaleidoscopic sound of The Flaming Lips,” says Dallas Symphony Orchestra CEO Kim Noltemy. “We are thrilled to bring this unique experience to the Meyerson and share a once-in-a-lifetime concert with Dallas. We are grateful to Capital One for their generosity to make this concert the headline act of SOLUNA.”
Highly regarded as the 1990s answer to the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds, The Soft Bulletin signified a stylistic shift from the Flaming Lips’ brand of guitar-driven noise and alternative rock to a more symphonic, Phil Spector-esque wall of sound. The album almost completely abandons guitars outright, as the instruments vary between purposefully out-of-tune synthesizers, theremins and in the case of the song “What Is the Light,” a digital wristwatch. The album also broke precedence in its rather extraordinary, albeit nonlinear narrative style, which starts by telling the story of two scientists who compete, but also work together to save the world.
Although the album has been out for over 20 years, it wasn’t until recently that the Flaming Lips saw fit to rearrange and repurpose it to be performed with an orchestra. In May 2016, the band played the Red Rocks Amphitheatre with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, in a performance Flood Magazine once regarded as “an object lesson in how such collaborations can, when done right, add entirely new dimensions to already-brilliant works.”
At that same show, the Flaming Lips performed two encores, which consisted of “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Pt. 1,” “Do You Realize??” and a cover of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity.”
Source: Dallas Observer
