A collaboration that has been buzzed about for months, the new track by the Flaming Lips with special Wisconsin-bred guest Bon Iver hit the web today and pretty much fizzled upon impact. What could have been a psychedelic dream team sounds like a nightmarish afternoon on brain-numbing codeine. I love a lot of the Lips' oddest stuff and am still coughing up the fumes from one of their car-stereo orchestras, but the weirdness here just sounds tired and lazy.
Titled "Ashes in the Air," the song will be featured on "The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends," a limited-edition vinyl set that the Lips are readying as a Record Store Day release on April 21. Other participants in the collection include Ke$ha, Coldplay's Chris Martin, Erykah Badu, My Morning Jacket's Jim James, Biz Markie and Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros. So yeah, the sessions were pretty much a red-alert for DEA agents. Here's hoping some of the other tracks don't so readily live up to this one's lyric, "We heard a sudden thud."
(Warning: the song contains profanities; and falsetto.)
