From the confines of quarantine, The Flaming Lips have released another new song and video, 'Will You Return / When You Come Down'.
The serene album opener seamlessly melds colourful visuals with lyrics of joyous abandon, immersing us into a dreamy landscape that couldn’t be more at odds with the world we find ourselves in today. During times of uncertainty scepticism is often a crutch, and positivity a meme. It’s far easier to be a cynic than to imagine a path forward, yet this video, filmed during quarantine does just that.
Shot in their home state of Oklahoma and directed by Wayne Coyne and George Salisbury, this introspective piece plays with the complexity of both identity and belonging.
When talking about the album, Wayne Coyne explains:
“Even though The Flaming Lips are from Oklahoma we never thought of ourselves as an AMERICAN band… for most of our musical life we’ve kind of thought of ourselves as coming from ‘Earth’… not really caring WHERE we were actually from. So, for the first time in our musical life we began to think of ourselves as ‘AN AMERICAN BAND’… telling ourselves that it would be our identity for our next creative adventure."
'Will You Return / When You Come Down' will feature on their highly-anticipated new album 'American Head', which is comprised of thirteen tracks and lands on September 11th; a fundamentally open-ended project, inviting you to make something of it, to tether it in time and space before letting it fully unfurl.
Tune in now.
Words: Josh Crowe
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