Album Flaming hard

Wayne Coyne finds double album tough work

15 June 2009 - Fresh from the studio frontman Wayne Coyne from The Flaming Lips has spoken exclusively to 6 Music about their tricky twelfth record.

The psychedelic band from Oklahoma have been busy penning their follow-up to 2006’s At War With The Mystics, due out in September.

Coyne explained they were making a two-disc set entitled Embryonic.

“We went into it thinking ‘are we going to make a double album?’ but it’s harder than you would think,” he said.

"Sometimes we’re unfocused and sometimes we’re just so wishy washy.”
Wayne Coyne

It’s been a while since The Flaming Lips released new material, although they did release a science fiction film in 2008, Christmas on Mars and go on tour.

The band said the new album came about after lengthy Jam sessions, but Coyne admitted that actually picking the songs has been a bit of a slog: “Because we want to go in so many strange directions and sometimes we’re unfocused and sometimes we’re just so wishy washy.”

'Sick of it'

After playing a headline slot at the Rockness festival in Inverness over the weekend Coyne says he’s glad he’s touring again.

He said he has a love/hate relationship with writing new records: “You have to work on it you have to really immerse yourself in it and be obsessed and shape it.

“I think it must be like being a cook in the kitchen you’re preparing this great thing but by the time it's ready you’re sick of it because you’ve been smelling it, you’ve got it in your hair and in your fingers and all that.”

Album nearly ready

Coyne reckons Embryonic will be ready by the autumn but they’ve yet to name all the songs or put them in some sort of order.

He said that usually the band has lots of leftover material that they don’t use but with a double album it’s different: “There’s only a couple of things we recorded that we probably won’t use and everything else I think we’re going to use.”

Coyne says that despite being in the band since 1983 he still gets nervous before a release. “It’s great and thrilling but kind of scary because you just don’t know if it’s going to work.”

The band are off to play festivals in Switzerland, America and Australia.

Emily Wither