I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: THE FLAMING LIPS-“Flowers of Neptune 6” (2020).

After a series of much harsher, darker albums, The Flaming Lips’ new record, American Head (due out next month) promises a much brighter, warmer experience.  Perhaps one indication of the change is that the guest singer on this song is Kacey Musgraves.  Sadly, she is barely audible at all and doesn’t really add any of her own flare to the song.

“Flowers of Neptune 6” opens with a quiet piano melody.  There’s slow (albeit loud) drums and acoustic guitars–it’s a Flaming Lips ballad.  This one feels almost sixties-like with the echoing voices and the primary melody.  Not to mention the content:

doing acid and watching the light bugs glow -oh oh oh
like tiny spaceships in a row-oh oh oh

The chorus is slow but catchy and the end of the song is a minute of instrumental fade out with slide guitars, choruses of voices of a moment for Kacey to hum a solo.

[READ: August 1, 2020] “My Widow”

This story is broken into shorter sections as the dead narrator relates a story about his living widow.

First we learn that his widow is a cat person.  Or, perhaps more correctly, a crazy cat lady.  She has about thirty.  She feeds them and cares for them, but really doesn’t care about anything else.  So when the roof develops a leak, she ignores it and allows the water to drip right onto her bed.

It doesn’t seem like much is going to happen in this story. She ignores the roof until she can’t any longer and then calls a roofer in to repair it. But nothing much happens with that.

The scene shifts to shopping.  “In her day, my widow was a champion shopper.”  She has a collection of antique jewelry, glassware, china figures and the like” which the deceased says would be truly valuable if she took care of the house.

On this day she has the wherewithal to go shopping. Her sister comes to pick her up and off they go.  She doesn’t like department stores–there’s no bargains to be had–but her sister needs tableware.

It’s not for a few days that she realizes that she doesn’t have her purse.  She must have left it in her sister’s car.  But no.  Could she have left it in the department store? But wouldn’t they have called her?

The third to last section is about the man who finds her purse.  It is called “Bob Smith, Aka. Smythe Roberts, Robert P Smithee, Claudio Noriega and Jack Frounce.”  Bob Smith rings her on the telephone to tell her he has found her purse.  He would mail it to her but the post would take a few days, so maybe he could bring it by?

His widow used to be more attuned to con men.  But she has let her guard down as of late.

The end of the story is a surprise with a couple of unexpected twists (no, the cats don’t save her).  Although the final sections don’t revel in her surprise.