At this point in The Flaming Lips’ career, not much that Wayne Coyne does comes as a huge shock. We told you about the slightly classist, 12-part “Two Blobs Fucking” (happy Valentine’s Day!) in February, which sure, was weird and innovative but not quite mind-shattering (ruin the experience over at the Chocolate Grinder). They announced forthcoming work with Neon Indian (a four-track 12-inch, coming soon), and recently, potential collaborations with James Murphy, Lee Ranaldo (Sonic Youth), and Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page — impressive, but in the Flaming Lips’ world, something Coyne can still be pretty blasé about. The Flaming Lips’ new, particularly bizarre offering come April? A “life-sized human skull completely made out of edible gummy bear stuff. It also has a gummy brain inside of it and, inside of that, there’s a USB flash drive that has three new songs on it” (via Pitchfork). Now that’s something.
I remember spilling coffee on my flash drive in college and losing a paper; we can assume that, nice guy that Wayne Coyne is, this gummy encasing won’t have the same effect on the music inside. Coyne explained how they decided to develop such “nervous” packaging: “We found this guy in Raleigh, North Carolina, who makes all these gummy bear things — even adult toys. I don’t know if he’s making giant dicks and pussies out of gummy bears, but we called him and said, ‘Hey, would you want to make a life-size human skull with a brain in it?’” Not something you hear every day.
A suggestion for The Flaming Lips: a discount package of the gummy skull plus a skull of Dan Aykroyd’s crystal vodka?
Pssst — don’t forget about Coyne’s promise of new songs every month of this year, or the retrospective box set, slated for release on Record Store Day!
• The Flaming Lips: http://www.flaminglips.com
• Warner Bros.: http://www.wmg.com
