The Flaming Lips: Hear It Is [RESTLESS]

Why you'll love it

This Restless reissue is newly remastered. Hear It Is is the band's first full-length album and Wayne Coyne's debut as lead singer, after his brother Mark stepped away from the microphone.

This edition

• Remastered

About the album

Long before the confetti cannons and the giant inflatable hamster balls, the Flaming Lips were three young men from Oklahoma City with fuzz pedals and a taste for the absurd. Their first full-length album finds them already wonderfully strange, mixing garage-punk noise and psychedelic haze with a sweet, wobbly melodic streak.

Wayne Coyne sings and plays guitar, Michael Ivins handles bass and backing vocals, and Richard English plays drums and keyboards, with Randy Burns engineering. "With You" is a lovely, lilting opener that comes back in reprise at the very end, "Trains, Brains & Rain" and "Unplugged" crash and swirl, "Just Like Before" shows the pop heart under the feedback, and "Godzilla Flick" is exactly as much fun as its title suggests.

Restless put it out in July 1986, and the record has a scrappy, homemade charm that later, bigger productions never quite replaced. The seeds of everything from The Soft Bulletin to Yoshimi are already here. The title is a pun, and they've been cheerfully committed to that level of seriousness ever since.

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

Tracklist

Listen

On Restless, a reissue of the 1986 album.