The Kiss of Death

Those long-familiar with The Flaming Lips can happily admonish the uninitiated masses with tales of the band's ongoing quest to integrate space rock seamlessly into the pop idiom but, at this point in their career, while the band has been wildly successful on a cult level, they've only occasionally brushed the outer-most quadrants of pop superstardom on the most superficial (and some would say ironic) of levels; even as their sound has gotten progressively larger, more bombastic and broad – sweeping, invading the truly genuinely populous medium of popular music (as in, everyone knows your name and bodyguards need to be hired to ward off and deter stalkers) has proven to be a daunting chore. Read More

In the year 2000, if someone said to you that Justin Timberlake -- who at the time was the blond-dyed, curly-haired, Britney-dating, falsettoed leader of boy band *NSYNC -- would be perhaps the top male pop artist in both sales and credibility at the end of the decade, you would have either laughed or cried. Read More

What more can we say about Black Tie Dynasty that we haven't already? Read More

while i totally concur that the weakest aspect of the bands oeuvre were the post happy monday styled vocals, i can't but help think that for all the hatred thrown in their direction they happened to release a lot of records that took the template of "trip hop" (in its original sense) and apply a verse/chorus/verse approach to the songs. in other words : psychedelic rock with underlying club friendly beats, and i loved them. often the real aural joys were buried in the drawn out instrumental grooves and with that in mind i have dug out the full 8.5 minute version of new moon, a track that was featured on their debut ep, free the regular fries . spaced out, loose, funky and still sounding bloody great. Read More