Taking Sides: Flaming Lips vs. Mercury Rev

Did Mercury Rev ever write a song as beautiful and funny as "The Southern Oklahoma Cosmic Trigger Contest"? Did they ever give cool names to their songs, like "Talkin' 'Bout the Smiling Deathporn Immortality Blues (Everyone Wants to Live Forever)," "The Gash (Batthe Hymn for the Wounded Mathematician)," and "Pilot Can At the Queer of God"? Did they ever release a 4CD box set where all four CDs are to be played simultaneously? Did they ever have a concert where they brought you a headphone set to wear and then you tuned into a local radio station to hear the music? No they bloody did not.

Boces and Yerself Is Steam both LEAGUES above any Flipshit

mercury rev is just ok, so i pick the flaming lips.

What Mercury Rev obviously did not do was create gimmicks like that, knowing that you'd swoon over such things regardless of actual effect. Which is not to say that the above are necessarily shit, just that you're defending them for being as such and not for being GOOD. I don't care if the Lips planted flags in random places. Anyone can do that.

Otherwise, I pick Mercury Rev.

PSYCH POP IS THE NEW LADDISM. MAD FOR IT.

The first three mercury rev albums are amazing.

This is actually quite true.

huh? i think this record was album of the year in at least 5 magazine polls.

But it's interesting to see how even around The Soft Bulletin era, Mercury Rev were the bigger band, and The Flaming Lips were actually the support act on that tour (I'm so annoyed that I didn't go to see it, just cos I didn't like Mercury Rev at the time). And The Flaming Lips have become such a bigger name in the last few years.

Qualifies: well, on ILX, yes.

haha i thought that was the whole point of "taking sides" threads. Usually, anyway.

I've never bought anythig by either of these guys, alhtough I had a Restless Records/Something Else split comp tape that I think I'd bought from somewhere because it had a bunch of metal on it but on the other side there was this weird stuff, like from "Oh My Gawd It's the Flaming Lips" and... Ben Folds Five?? Anyway I remember the name of the album the comp wanted me to buy more than the song. Everything I've heard from them since sounds like a kind of microhouse version of Ween. Mercury Rev on the other hand I never had any of, but my roommate in college had a pre-release tape of one of their albums that he got in... 1995? Not sure which one it was but I liked it a lot. It was really violent.

M Rev win because of "Sudden Ray Of Hope".

I've seen the Flaming Lips live a few times, but take away the dancing animals, films and giant disco balls and..well..it sort of falls away rather, doesn't it? Even the live show gets dull after a few times.. 'Let's sing HAPPY BIRTHDAY to someone you don't know'

Oh, please no, not again..

I think this is the problem with the Flaming Lips. When they first started to do these 'fun' shows, everyone was amazed by them, because they were so different from your typical gigs. But now that they've been doing these for 2+ years it's got a bit boring, because to better their previous shows, they have to do something even better (eg Wayne in the giant hamster wheel). Especially with Yoshimi, it seems that the band are concetrating more on the show than on the music itself.

I'm just glad I saw The Flaming Lips when I did. On the tour just before the release of Yoshimi, so we had all the great songs, and the beginning of the dressing up as animal phase.. but not as overblown as the gigs are now.

This is something Mercury Rev could stand to do. The last time I saw them was for the huge Deserter's Songs media push at the Bowery Ballroom in NYC, there were expensive posters for it everywhere, free stickers, CDs. It was the most listless show I think I'd ever seen. And I've seen Royal Trux, people.

Does ILM really not have a standalone Mercury Rev thread? Christ.

Mind currently being melted by the See You on the Other Side LP. This album is AMAZING. What the fuck is going on during "Close Encounters of the Third Grade"?

I always forget about Mercury Rev these days - need to go listen to that.

For a while it seemed like Rev and the Lips were going to duel it out for modern inventive, multi layered studio productions but then both of them hit the skids - the Lips with 'At War With the Mystics' and Rev with 'The Secret Migration'. I'm sure the Lips realized that the approach that had begun with 'Zaireeka' had finally run out of juice on the 4th attempt and was being stretch to the limits when applied to obvious pop aspirations ("The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song" is pretty much the worst thing they've ever done!) Fortunately that resulted in them returning to being fucking insane and we ended up with the likes of 'Embryonic' and 'The Terror'. Even though this latest one is O.K. and occasionally Wayne disappears up his own ass with gimmicks, you'd be hard pressed to find another group out there with that many years behind them who are still producing interesting pop music.

I'm still surprised to this day with the relatively muted reaction to 'All is Dream'. I thought that was a spectacular album. Maybe it's a bit more straight laced and obvious that 'The Soft Bulletin' but their orchestral approach to that record is beautiful. Little indie pop symphonies.

I like maybe a third of All is Dream. Up to that they had a spectacular run though, I'd rate it higher than the Lips at this point (who I rarely go back to, Coyne is just too annoying)

"All is Dream" is a fantastic album: The solo on "Little Dreams" is so good.

Favourite Rev song is definitely "Funny Little Bird"

All Is Dream is their last album that I really enjoy musically but I think it's the beginning of a sharp decline lyrically.

See You On The Other Side has always been my favorite. I feel like it always gets lost between Boces and Deserter's Songs. But maybe with the exception of "Young Man's Stride" which is sequenced way too early, it might be their best effort. It still has the bite of their earlier stuff, but you can still feel that spacey trippyness of their later stuff before it descended into neo-hippie blandness.

I saw them live post-All Is Dream and it was, quite frankly, one of the best shows I've ever seen.

SYOTOS is def the peak

tbh I'm not sure All Is Dream really holds up (though an improvement over DS imo) but Tides Of The Moon and Lincoln's Eyes still bring it maybe

like, A Drop In Time starts and you want to kick the man downstairs

Yeah, the saccharie disney-isms of All is Dream were when it started to go awry a bit - Secret Migration was even more dire, with the exception of "In a Funny Way" (which was also on "Laurel Canyon" soundtrack).

The hip-hop grooves are part of what makes the Flaming Lips' space rock interesting to me (they're currently touring with Clipping). I'm not as familiar with Mercury Rev but none of what I've heard has that flavour.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPMpoAZa3tI

maaaan

Night and Fog is a great tune, one of their best. All is Dream as a whole is merely ok though. The Secret Migration is dull except for In a Funny Way, Across Your Ocean and First Time Mother's Joy (I love the harmonies on the latter.) I haven't listened to anything since, due to the sense of an irreversible decline into increasing blandness.

I thought Deserters Songs was amazing at the time, but I'm not sure about it now. If I were to be a DS vs The Soft Bulletin, I think the songwriting on the latter is stronger, and has caused it to hold up better. Yoshimi has a lot of good stuff too, but At War with the Mystics seemed to be all texture and nothing else. I never listened to the later supposed return to form. As for the Rev, I think Boces and SYOTOS are probably the most enduring for the mix of inventiveness and tunes (Yerself is Steam is perhaps just a little *too* self-indulgent.)

mercury rev duh?

Rocking out to "delta bottleneck" as the last song at a house party in '98 or 99 felt pretty cool

I may be the only person in the universe who thought Snowflake Midnight was excellent. Album from 2015 much less so.

Count me among the "All is Dream is underrated" crowd, and, like yesca, I was always shocked by the fact that the record fared so poorly (relative to the previous album, of course). Perhaps part of it could be blamed on the overly-ambitious Disney-isms, part of it was that maybe they followed up a critically acclaimed album too soon, part of it could be that people were just getting over that particular sound by that point, I dunno. I think individual songs on All is Dream are great but its one of those weird albums that doesn't work as whole, somehow. Maybe it's a sequencing issue?

I know this: if they'd pulled a Neutral Milk Hotel and stopped making records after Deserter's Songs, there would be multiple Mercury Rev threads revived every time there was so much as a a rumor of new Mercury Rev music, and people would be talking about them in the same hushed, reverent whispers they do MBV, Boards of Canada, and, err, Neutral Milk Hotel.

"All is Dream" also came out in the states on 9/11, which may have overshadowed its release

I don't mean that in a bad way, just that it was a hectic time..