Album of the day (#4235): Clouds Taste Metallic

[albummaster]

Today's album of the day

Clouds Taste Metallic by The Flaming Lips (View album | Buy this album)

Year: 1995.
Country:
Overall rank: 994
Average rating: 78/100 (from 392 votes).

Thumbnail. Click to enlarge.

Tracks:
1. The Abandoned Hospital Ship
2. Psychiatric Explorations Of The Fetus With Needles
3. Placebo Headwound
4. This Here Giraffe
5. Brainville
6. Guy Who Got A Headache And Accidentally Saves The World
7. When You Smile
8. Kim's Watermelon Gun
9. They Punctured My Yolk
10. Lightning Strikes The Postman
11. Christmas At The Zoo
12. Evil Will Prevail
13. Bad Days [Aurally Excited Version]

About album of the day: The BestEverAlbums.com album of the day is the album appearing most prominently in member charts in the previous 24 hours. If an album, or artist, has previously been selected within a x day period, the next highest album is picked instead (and so on) to ensure a bit of variety. A full history of album of the day can be viewed here.

[Skinny]

They don’t make them like this anymore. Bugged out, uncomfortably earnest, acid casualty lyrics, wild and spidery riffs blowing out from every angle, and immediately catchy melodies piled high atop each other. I spent my entire teenage years and early twenties convincing anyone who would listen that this is the greatest album ever made - and I don’t regret doing so, even if I don’t return to it as much anymore. Definitely the highest point in a surprisingly stacked discography, from a bunch of people who always truly believed - rightly or (more likely) wrongly - that a couple of decent verses, a memorable chorus, and a badass riff could save the world. No point mentioning highlights, because everything here is gorgeous in its naivety and execution.
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2021 in full effect. Come drop me some recs. Y'all know what I like.

[HoldenM]

So underrated. What a great album.

Track picks
1. The Abandoned Hospital Ship
4. This Here Giraffe
9. They Punctured My Yolk
13. Bad Days [Aurally Excited Version]
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Inversion Verses
https://thesplitinfinitives1.bandcamp.c...ion-verses

[MadhattanJack]

I'm not so sure it's "underrated" — it's their #3 album here on BEA after all, out of 46 (though a lot of those are actually singles and comps), and it's a Top 1,000 album by a Top 100 band. But "greatest album ever made" got me to listen to it again after, I dunno, 10 years? I'd probably rank it at #2 personally (right now Yoshimi has that spot on BEA) but I can't imagine it ever being ranked higher than The Soft Bulletin, at least not by most people.

If you take all the "ancillary factors" into consideration, it also has really amateurish cover art (at least relative to their other albums), the mix is a little too flat, and they hadn't yet perfected the "Dave Fridmann Signature Sound" by overdriving the snare drum (among other things) either, so it just sounds a little less "alive" than some of the later stuff.

Nevertheless the songs are great, there's no denying that, but it's almost like Wayne Coyne hadn't quite learned to really emote or lament at this point, whereas on The Soft Bulletin he does both almost effortlessly. I don't know if he took lessons or what, but for example there's nothing like "The Spiderbite Song" on Clouds Taste Metallic or on their earlier albums (at least the ones I've heard, which admittedly isn't all of them). That's the sort of thing that turns casual fans into committed fans, so maybe that's another reason why this record isn't ranked a bit higher.