Flaming Lips-Fight
Test
(Warner Brothers)
The Flaming Lips have put together a nice, quirky body of
work since catching our attention with "She Don't Like Jelly" a few years ago.
This covers-heavy EP is only going to add a footnote to their body of work,
though. It starts off rather spectacularly with a lovely acoustic "Fight
Test."
The real reason most people will hear of this album is
their
mope-rock cover of
Kylie Minogue's recent single "Can't Get You Out Of My Head." There is a
long history of slightly arty bands doing total rethinks of pop hits, going back
to Aztec Camera's wondrous 1984 acoustic cover of Van Halen's "Jump" and U2's
live performances of ABBA's "Dancing Queen." These can be fascinating, but
the one ingredient most needed is that you have to feel the band's grudging but
true and total love of the song. This is definitely a very interesting
rethink of "Can't Get You Out of My Head," however, you
can feel the band's disdain for the source material and this ruins any quirky
fun that could come from it. (At least they didn't go as far as Travis,
who used a sample clip from an interview to apologize in advance for their cover
of Britney Spears' "...Baby One More Time.") Frankly, it's
different from the Minogue original, but even the band's biggest supporters would
be hard pressed to say it is better.
There is also a
pretty soft guitar cover of Beck's "Golden Age" that again doesn't add much to
the original. The band does pull off a lovely psychedelic-vibed take on
Radiohead's "Knives Out." The Lips' own songs fare much better
here, with "Fight Test" and the electronica dance floor rave up "Do You
Realize?" showing off the band's chops in a way that other the writers' songs
don't.
(6/03)
