The Flaming Lips: King’s Mouth: Music and Songs

Like Bizarro World Frank Sinatras on acid, the Flaming Lips have always done it their way. This longstanding alt-rocking Oklahoma collective consistently paint their music outside the lines of sonically acceptable society, and they’re at it again with their 15th studio album. Initially issued as a limited-edition gold-vinyl LP on Record Store Day in April before seeing wider release in July, King’s Mouth follows the trajectory of Wayne Coyne’s fractured fairytale as buttressed with South London-accented narration by the Clash’s resident iconoclast, Mick Jones. (The Lips are also supporting this project with a Coyne-concocted traveling art installation and an accompanying book.) The cinematic nature of King’s Mouth comes across in full-bore exploratory Lips style, challenging stereo soundfield parameters every beep and boop of the way. Bear sonic witness to such wide-panned tracks as the burbling, keyboard-kissed wonderment of “Giant Baby,” the channel-swirling synth hosannas of “Electric Fire,” the percussive pre-funereal onomatopoeia of “Feedaloodum Beedle Dot,” and the buoyant, acoustified album-ending parable twins, “Mouth of the King” and “How Can a Head.” King’s Mouth adds yet another lofty chapter to the Lips’ keen catalog of wide-eyed aural head trips.