Flaming Lips - Telepathic Surgery

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"Drug Machine In Heaven" wastes no time, and makes the big arena rock gestures, but are missing a musical sense to pull them together. In contrast, the Specter-ian tone of "Chrome Plated Suicide"**** is deliberately poppy, and the Lips will later make this type of song more their own with "Shine On Sweet Jesus" from the next album. The bulk of the album is made up of passable punky riff-rock, such as "Hari-Krishna Stomp Wagon", "Fryin Up", and "Redneck School Of Technology", though the next series of songs, "Shaved Gorilla", "Spontaneous Combustion", and "Last Drop Of Morning Dew" slow down to a Neil Young / Stones pace. Despite a couple detours, such as the pointless "UFO Story" (which works better live), and a few minutes of noise, the middle of the album is consistently listenable. The final parting shot "Begs And Achin'" sounds like a clever idea for a song, but too loose and badly sung, even by Coyne's standards, though the main riff will find new life when it shows up again in "Turn It On" from Transmissions.

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