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Sep 11, 2020American Head stands alongside The Soft Bulletin and Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots as one of the very best records The Flaming Lips have recorded and should be required listening for anyone who’s gone on their own quarantine-induced walk down memory lane in search of a way to survive this year.
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UncutSep 8, 2020The 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. [Sep 2020, p.29]
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Sep 8, 2020American 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.
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The WireNov 6, 2020They continue to surprise and enchant. [Sep 2020, p.52]
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Sep 25, 2020American Head's individual tracks can be enjoyed separately, but the album is best enjoyed as a whole. Think of it as a meditation on family, friends, getting older, and the irony of feeling lost in the world the more one learns about it. It's a trip, a journey to the past that one doesn't want to return to but never wants to forget.
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Sep 14, 2020There’s little about American Head that deviates from the Lips’ usual surreal sound. The overarched arrangements, replete with shimmering rhythms, soaring instrumentation, hushed harmonies and all sorts of cosmic noodling remain intact. If anything, they borrow from early Pink Floyd, hitching a ride to gain interstellar overdrive.
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Sep 11, 2020A crystalline classic.
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Sep 11, 2020Far 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.
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Sep 10, 2020American Head addresses something more universal – memories of childhood, adolescence and family, and their lifelong imprint on us – with an expansive sound that is equally accessible, tender and surreal.
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Sep 9, 2020‘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.
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MojoSep 8, 2020If we force ourselves inside American Head, we find it full of intimate details that eschew social distancing. Breathe it in. [Sep 2020, p.86]
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Sep 8, 2020Though the current incarnation of the Flaming Lips has been together since 2014, and thus responsible for these various digressions, the band has undertaken a sonic overhaul here that matches the emotional, sentimental tenor of Coyne and Steven Drozd’s new compositions.
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Sep 14, 2020This is them coming to grips with their heritage and their age, although it’s no swan song. But 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.
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Sep 11, 2020American Head handles this heavy subject matter with a light touch, framing its stories in a magic-realist sunset atmosphere that lends even its gravest songs an earthbound charm.
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Sep 11, 2020Despite the similarities, the record does not fall in The Soft Bulletin’s shadow. It is definitely the work of a veteran act that learned how to evolve their sound and incorporate the past into it too. Luckily, they have reached another high point in their volatile career, continuing to move forward.
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Sep 11, 2020The album has a slow chain drive narrative to it that feels as close to a recounting as anything the group has done. And there is a certain comfort in settling in for the album’s nearly hour-long journey to the before and the beyond.
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Sep 11, 2020Wayne Coyne’s lyrics occasionally aim to capture some of the small-town desperation of a Bruce Springsteen or John Mellencamp, referencing go-nowhere greasers and bikers with names like Johnny and Tommy. More often than not, however, he reverts to his usual themes: spaceships, magic forests and the undimmed majesty of the milky way.
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Sep 10, 2020Whilst 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.
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Sep 10, 2020Musically, it’s the ‘Lips at their most fully-realised. 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.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 28 out of 30
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Mixed: 1 out of 30
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Negative: 1 out of 30
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