(It was released on 5/17/99 in the UK before coming out in the US the following month.) Hailed as a masterpiece upon arrival, the album is still arguably the Lips’ finest creative output, though with a discography as vast and varied as theirs you’ll never have complete consensus on that. One of those albums is The Soft Bulletin, which completes its second decade today. They formed the year I was born, and I am now halfway through my thirties - old enough that today’s teens make me feel like an ancient relic and albums released when I was their age are turning 20. On record they’ve been skuzzy noise-bombers, fuzz-pop cartoon characters, experimental stunt artists, digital folk-pop anthem-slingers, and tripped-out paranoiacs. They ushered Miley Cyrus through the weirdest phase of her public identity crisis. They were contemporaneous with both 90210, on which they memorably guested, and The O.C., which fomented the Bush-era indie boom they rode to festival ubiquity. They were labelmates with Fear, Wipers, and the Dead Milkmen and were three albums deep by the time Nirvana released Bleach. Those thousands singing along to Why Does It Always Rain on Me?, in the drizzle, are probably kicking themselves over a decade on that they missed the opportunity to be at what was, in hindsight, Ground Zero for The Flaming Lips’ evergreen appeal.The Flaming Lips have survived and evolved through an astonishing number of indie-rock life cycles. This is an album of its time, sure – but one with a reach that continues to feel its way around the modern musical landscape. Just as previous releases had influenced the likes of Grandaddy and Mercury Rev, The Soft Bulletin and its successor Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots have informed acts including MGMT and Empire of the Sun. Ultimately, this record paved the way not only for The Flaming Lips to enjoy commercial success far beyond their homes, but also opened the doors for younger acts with a spirit of adventure in their blood to breach the pop charts. Race for the Prize and Waitin’ for a Superman – these are anthems built for mass celebration, and while the crowd isn’t wholly won over yet, fast-forward a few years and the reverence for these tracks is clear wherever The Flaming Lips pitch up with their travelling freak(ishly brilliant) show. In the presence of Wayne Coyne and company, with hand puppets in place of crowd-surfing bubbles and multiple dancers dressed up as aliens, everything’s exactly as it should be though. That stage, after 17 years: the New Bands tent. Seventeen years and nine albums since their formation, The Flaming Lips are headlining at Glastonbury, playing to a packed tent. It’s proggy, it’s rocky – but it’s not prog-rock, really nothing that the average man on the street can’t lean an ear towards and be immediately rewarded. Experimentation has been tempered the group’s out-there tendencies reined right in for a collection that sings with the same warmth and composure that characterised The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds. The Flaming Lips, Oklahoma oddballs responsible for the four-discs-at-once headache of 1997’s Zaireeka, have crossed into the mainstream courtesy of The Soft Bulletin, NME’s album of 1999. But this is something I only witness in passing, as another band has had an equally brilliant year.
The crowd for them goes back, back, and back some more, fires flickering up the hillside.
Travis have had an amazing 12 months, their second studio album The Man Who earning the Scottish outfit the Best Album and Best Newcomers awards at the Brits in March. And Saturday’s Pyramid Stage headliners could well be described similarly. Glastonbury Festival, in the summer of 2000.
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