The Flaming Lips’ New Single Shows Off Their Gentler Side

The Flaming Lips just released their first new recording of the year, “Flowers of Neptune 6.” Produced by Dave Fridmann and the Flaming Lips, the song reflects the “gentler side of the Lips paisley oeuvre and melodically flows downstream into a welcoming wormhole of wistful summer pop,” as it’s put in a press release. 

A music video filmed in the band’s home state of Oklahoma and directed by Wayne Coyne and George Salisbury accompanies the single. It finds Coyne walking through a field with an American flag wrapped around his shoulders.

“‘Flowers Of Neptune 6’ track started off as a very evocative series of melodies that Steven Drozd had woven together,” says singer Wayne Coyne in a press release about the track. “The first time he played it for me I was stunned by its emotional flow. The three sections (well, they seem like sections to me) seemed to hint at an older, mature mind reflecting back into a journey from younger innocence then starting to learn and understand and keeps going into the panic of becoming one with the world. The opening lyric ‘Yellow sun is going down so slow…Doing acid and watching the light-bugs glow like tiny spaceships in a row…’ is the coolest thing I’ll ever know…and is a combination of blissful, innocent, psychedelic experiences that Steven and Kacey Musgraves (she sings harmony with me on the track) and myself all discussed.”

Coyne has designed a band new T-shirt featuring his drawing of what a quarantine time Flaming Lips show might look like — it features an image of Coyne performing from inside a giant plastic bubble as he is wont to do.

Photo credit: George Salisbury