Released: 13th March 2020
Rating: ★★★★
The latest announcement of a supergroup is always revered by the respective fans of each artist. Even more so when their portmanteau is something as deliciously riddled with double-entendre as the name Deap Lips. The Flaming Lips and Deap Vally as artists are both wickedly idiosyncratic, and their self-titled collaboration is a mind-melting journey down a desert storm whirlwind that leads to some kind of indie-pop netherworld. ‘Shit Talkin’ sums up the entire project with the words: “We’re not ones for subtlety”.
Packed full of sass and swagger, even down to the song titles; this is an album that none of us were expecting, but one we definitely all needed to hear. ‘One Thousand Sisters With Aluminium Foil Calculators’ conjures up imagery of a dreamy ice cavern of delight which serves as an interlude before becoming an amorphous entity of light on the cusp of supernova into a luminous disco number.
There is a plethora of influences to be found here. ‘Wandering Witches’ is a trip-hop masterpiece, and ‘There Is Know Right There Is Know Wrong’ provides a sumptuous and slightly erotic feel to synthesised sounds. The interlinking thing between all of these songs? The word ‘motherfucker’ which makes up for about 15% of the lyrical content that fleets between obscure, philosophical, and ironically basic all at the same time.
Deap Lips have provided us with an insight into another realm of music that we didn’t know we needed, and it definitely fills a void.
Tyler Damara Kelly
