The Flaming Lips 'Late Night Tales' album

Flaming Lips’ celebrated re-reading of the White Stripes ‘Seven Nation Army’, which has been eagerly sought across the worldwide web...

... since being performed live at the Hammersmith Apollo late last year, will finally the light of day as one of the highlights of the band’s forthcoming ‘Late Night Tales’ compilation of their listening “pleasures”.

Playfully dubbed ‘Harry Potter’s and George W. Bush’s Severed Head Army Mix’, the wack-o rendition takes sideswipes at anyone in range with febrile Lips-ian logic. Let’s just say, while it may be at pains to be at least as powerful as the original, it sure ain’t faithful to the lyric.

For anyone who’s ever found the - albeit enchanting and engrossing - Flaming Lips listening experience akin to unraveling a riddle wrapped inside an enigma, ‘Late Night Tales’ is likely to further flummox with its unlikely evidence of what the trio listen to kicking back at home in Oklahoma City.

You might guess that any band that takes in Wayne Coyne, Stephen Drozd and Michael Ivins, was always going to be, um, far-reaching in its tastes, but ‘Late Night Tales’ shows their musical solar system to be bigger yet than science had hitherto conjectured.

Miles Davis (smooth Fifties variety) rubs shoulders with Seventies bed-sit fave Chris Bell (formerly of Big Star and soon to be deceased) who in turn indulges in a bit of frottage with a half-forgotten piece of classic Eighties psychodrama from Psychedelic Furs.

Elsewhere bands who once toured/made-a-record with Flaming Lips leave their mark (step forward the Lush, Sebadoh, Alfie and Chemical Brothers), while the presence of art-drone Krautrockers Faust, and perhaps the evergreen tristesse of Nick Drake or pioneering ambient scapes of Brian Eno, could maybe be extrapolated from the Lips own catalogue. But you would be hard pushed to guess at the inclusion of Seventies art-poppers 10cc, or indeed the hardly seminal Bauhaus off-cut Love And Rockets, who here sound surprisingly ace and relevant.

Bjork kicks off the collection, though sadly not with her once mooted Christmas collaboration with the Lips, but instead the marvelous ‘Unravel’.
Other highlights include Roxy Music’s ‘2HB’, from their 1972 self-titled high-water mark debut, the overlooked majesty of The Chameleons ‘Up The Down Escalator and recognized majesty of Radiohead’s ‘Pyramid Song’.

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The Flaming Lips - Late Night Tales