The Flaming Lips: Clouds Taste Metallic (Rhino Reserve series, Start Your Ear Off Right 2026) [RHINO]

Why you'll love it

This Rhino Reserve pressing puts the album on 180g vinyl for Record Store Day's Start Your Ear Off Right 2026. It was the last Lips record with guitarist Ronald Jones, and critics now rank it among the band's best.

This edition

• Rhino Reserve series
• 180g vinyl
• Start Your Ear Off Right 2026
• Pressed in the USA
• Stereo mix

About the album

The title comes from a story told by bassist Paul D'Amour, who was flown through a cloud in a roofless plane and heard the pilot remark that clouds taste metallic. That's about the right level of matter-of-fact strangeness for the record that followed the surprise hit She Don't Use Jelly and sits just before the band's orchestral turn.

Dave Fridmann co-produced with the band, and Wayne Coyne, Steven Drozd, Michael Ivins and Ronald Jones fill it with fuzz, glockenspiel and big, wobbly melodies. "The Abandoned Hospital Ship" opens on a hush before the guitars crash in, "This Here Giraffe" is a gloriously noisy singalong, "Christmas At The Zoo" sets the animals free, and "They Punctured My Yolk" was later sampled by the Beastie Boys. "Bad Days (Aurally Excited Version)" closes things with a grin.

The sessions feature heavily in the documentary The Fearless Freaks, and Record Store Day later issued an alternate mix that puts Jones's guitar front and centre. We have checked, and the vinyl tastes of nothing in particular.

Also at Kops: more The Flaming Lips on vinyl · browse Alternative

Tracklist

Listen

On Warner / Rhino (cat# RES1 45911), a reissue of the 1995 album.