The Flaming Lips have announced details about their new studio album.
The follow-up to 2019’s King’s Mouth will be titled American Head and it’ll released on September 11 through Bella Union in the UK and Europe, and Warner Records in the US.
The album will include the previously released single Flowers Of Neptune 6, with The Flaming Lips today revealing a video for another new track titled My Religion Is You.
The Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne has published a long form story about the album and the inspirations behind it.
He says: “Even though The Flaming Lips are from Oklahoma we never thought of ourselves as an American band. I know growing up in Oklahoma I was never influenced by, or was very aware of any musicians from Oklahoma. We mostly listened to the Beatles and my mother loved Tom Jones. It wasn’t until I was about 10 or 11 that my older brothers would know a few of the local musician dudes.
“So for most of our musical life we’ve 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 it would be our identity for our next creative adventure.
“We had become a seven-piece ensemble and were beginning to feel more and more of a kinship with groups that have a lot of members in them. We started to think of classic American bands like The Grateful Dead and Parliament-Funkadelic and how maybe we could embrace this new vibe.
“The music and songs that make up American Head are based in a feeling – A feeling that, I think, can only be expressed through music and songs. We were, while creating it, trying to not hear it as sounds, but to feel it. Mother’s sacrifice, Father’s intensity, Brother’s insanity, Sister’s rebellion... I can’t quite put it into words.”
Coyne concludes: “Something switches and others –your brothers and sisters and mother and father... your pets – start to become more important to you. In the beginning there is only you and your desires are all that you can care about, but something switches. I think all of these songs are about this little switch.”
American Head will include a total of 13 tracks, with God And The Policeman featuring a guest appearance from country star Kasey Musgraves.
The Flaming Lips: American Head
1. Will You Return / When You Come Down
2. Watching the Lightbugs Glow
3. Flowers Of Neptune 6
4. Dinosaurs On The Mountain
5. At The Movies On Quaaludes
6. Mother I've Taken LSD
7. Brother Eye
8. You n Me Sellin' Weed
9. Mother Please Don't Be Sad
10. When We Die When We're High
11. Assassins of Youth
12. God and the Policeman (Feat. Kacey Musgraves)
13. My Religion Is You
