The Flaming Lips and their mates in the bands Stardeath and the White Dwarfs (fronted by Wayne Coyne's nephew Dennis) have decided to put on a show in Grandma's barn. And they've chosen to recreate Pink Floyd's classic song cycle, Dark Side of the Moon. An album beloved of middle-aged gentlemen and stoners everywhere, it's almost too obvious a psychedelic touchstone for the fabulous furry freaks.
And the results are... interesting. First, the record has all the charm you'd expect from the Flaming Lips. It avoids note-perfect recreations and lush production, in favour of a stripped down, ropey, and vaguely lo-fi fuzz-fest. Furthermore, there are no ironic quotation marks. This isn't a pop art happening. It's more like the audio equivalent of the Mona Lisa as re-rendered by a sensitive but asocial outsider artist with nothing but a box of crayons. Indeed, you can almost feel freak tongues protruding between freak teeth with the effort it takes to follow those complex Pink Floyd chord sequences, time-signatures, and texture shifts. And as a result it is smile-inducing.
But like a precocious child, after a while it starts to grate on weary adult auditory canals. For example, while replacing Clare Torry's soulful wails on 'The Great Gig in the Sky' with a less tuneful and sonically-effected Peaches was eyebrow-raising the first time around, by the third listen it just sounded wrong. It made me want to root out the original... And I don’t even like the original. So in a way the three bands collected here have achieved something - they've made me feel defensive about an album I never thought I liked in the first place.