American Head
Details
LP / Format
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CRITIC REVIEWS
91
For the first time in nearly two decades, they’ve rediscovered this winning formula. As a result, American Head stands alongside The Soft Bulletin and Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots as one of the very best records The Flaming Lips have recorded.
90
The Flaming Lips have been making music for 36 years and in all that time little equals the music of American Head.
90
The whole of American Head finds Wayne Coyne and Steven Drozd examining the nature of family, love, death and nostalgia with a sincerity and tenderness that's been missed.
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3y
90
American Heads is an album that challenges the double-sided coin of nostalgia head on, embracing the highs, whilst confronting the lows. This open-ended offering brilliantly entices you to extrapolate meaning from it, to attach it to a time and space before letting it fully unfurl.
85
American Head is a rare concept album that actually coheres as a narrative, but can just as easily (but less rewardingly, perhaps) be enjoyed as simply a set of the band’s most potent and moving tunes since the early '00s.
80
‘American Head’ is a soft, reflective moment of taking in and appreciating the vista once the trip has worn off – when king’s heads and evil pink robots have melted away – and the dust has settled.
80
For the first time in over a decade, Wayne Coyne and The Flaming Lips have concocted their most consistent trip through their wonderland of neo-psychedelic dream-pop since their career highlights 'Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots' and 'The Soft Bulletin'. It's a trip very much worth taking.
80
The Flaming Lips bounce back from a hit-and-miss decade with a lush and ironically sobering concept album.
80
Another twist for the Lips, but one that’s beautiful and evocative.
80
If we force ourselves inside American Head, we find it full of intimate details that eschew social distancing. Breathe it in.
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3y
80
It's a trip, a journey to the past that one doesn't want to return to but never wants to forget.
80
The Flaming Lips’ best and most fully realized albums since The Soft Bulletin.
80
It’s quintessential Coyne: a simultaneous reminder of humanity’s fragility and a celebration of its resilience.
80
Far from a rehash of the band's previous glories, American Head feels transformational; at once magical and down-to-earth, it's the album the Flaming Lips needed to make and fans needed to hear at this point in their career.
80
Tt’s likely listeners will be swept away by the celestial sounds and not especially focused on the stated theme.
78
American Head does what its predecessors haven’t been able to do – it shows the Flaming Lips still know how to write thoughtful and sincere songs that also tap into the psychedelics their fans have come to expect.
77
At the top of their third decade, the Lips rekindle their past romance with Neil Young’s piano ballads, the Beatles’ psychedelic guitar tones, and Bowie’s stargazing anthems on a deeply personal album.
76
Akin to its lyrics, American Head ends up as a timeless adventure. Even though it tends to fall a bit too much on the mellow side, it’s great to see how focused The Flaming Lips are again.
75
There is a certain comfort in settling in for the album’s nearly hour-long journey to the before and the beyond.
70
Whilst it’s not quite in the same league as many of The Flaming Lips’ albums – not just The Soft Bulletin – it has plenty of worthy moments that can blossom in time.
70
This album for the most of its runtime remains parked back in the Flaming Lips’ wheelhouse.
70
It may not get your feet moving but it’ll tug at the heartstrings. Each track builds up slowly like a rising tide that eventually envelops you. Compelling stuff.
60
They've recorded what might be the most straightforward set of songs in their career to date.
58
For an album so steeped in nostalgia for the Flaming Lips’ early history, American Head never quite recaptures the feel of three inspired humans playing music together in a sweaty room.
40
The American art-rockers try to revisit commercial highs, but their cliches fail to convince.
For many, this should be seen as a return to form for a group that has been steadily the most quirky act in music for the better part of the last three decades. Their obvious peak years were between 1999-2009, where the group fully embraced the weirdness they had exhibited on Transmissions From the Satellite Heart and found the best possible translation of that weirdness. The Soft Bulletin, Yoshimi Battles, At War With the Mystics and Embryonic are some of the best work the group ever released ... read more
This is a massive return to form and the best LP that they have made in a long time. I t sounds and feels like classic er Flaming Lips and that makes this young(ish) man very happy indeed.
Essential Track - You n Me Sellin' Weed
It’s been a long while since I last wrote anything, I’ve been busy with school and other more, depressing matters which I might get into in another review, but for now I wanted to start this day of reviews with probably the most niche of the three I’m going to be reviewing. The Flaming Lips up to this point have been very hit or miss for everyone. They had some amazing records in the mid 2000s, and then in 2014 they came out with two of their best EPs in Strobo Trip and 7 ... read more
American Head Feels a bit like a mix of The Soft Bulletin and Embryonic in a way and while it starts out great and has an excellent closer, a lot else just feels like it's the flaming lips on autopilot even if it still has style and texture.
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Track List
| 1 | Will You Return / When You Come Down 5:21 | 87 |
| 2 | Watching the Lightbugs Glow 2:53 | 79 |
| 3 | Flowers of Neptune 6 4:30 | 91 |
| 4 | Dinosaurs on the Mountain 3:38 | 84 |
| 5 | At the Movies on Quaaludes 3:41 | 85 |
| 6 | Mother I've Taken LSD 3:48 | 82 |
| 7 | Brother Eye 4:23 | 83 |
| 8 | You n Me Sellin' Weed 4:56 | 80 |
| 9 | Mother Please Don't Be Sad 3:35 | 86 |
| 10 | When We Die When We're High 3:39 | 79 |
| 11 | Assassins of Youth 4:12 | 84 |
| 12 | God and the Policeman 2:28 feat. Kacey Musgraves | 87 |
| 13 | My Religion Is You 3:33 | 91 |
Total Length: 50 minutes
Year End Lists
| #8 | / | Magnet |
| #10 | / | MOJO |
| #17 | / | The Needle Drop |
| #21 | / | Les Inrocks |
| #21 | / | SPIN |
| #22 | / | FLOOD |
| #32 | / | Uncut |
| #42 | / | MondoSonoro |
| #47 | / | Consequence of Sound |
| #47 | / | Under the Radar |
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Added on: June 26, 2020