The Flaming Lips with Lightning Bolt - The Flaming Lips with Lightning Bolt (Warner Bros, 2011)

The Flaming Lips with Lightning Bolt
The Flaming Lips with Lightning Bolt
Warner Bros
2011

Rating: 6.5 unexplained scars out of 10

The Flaming Lips seem intent to carpet the earth with weird EPs this year, and this is yet another one for the stacks. The Flaming Lips play a couple of tracks with the help of Lightning Bolt, and then Lightning Bolt sorta play renditions of those same songs with the help of the Flaming Lips. And the entire thing is a giant noise-fest of head-fuckery. This music sounds like it might easily have been found on one of their very first albums, back when their sound had a lot more in common with the Butthole Surfers than just living in the next state over. This is not "The Soft Bulletin". I'm not sure it's even on the same astral plane or in the same universe. You'll not be singing along to these songs. But fuck it, I'm digging it anyways...

Lightning Bolt - Ride The Skies (Load, 2001)

Lightning Bolt
Ride The Skies
Load
2001

Rating: 7 sparks of static electricity out of 10

When you give your band a name like Lightning Bolt, it is your constitutional duty to be a really rocking band. Anything less would be a disgrace to the fine upstanding tradition of naming hard rock bands and/or songs after inclement weather(for example, Hurricane, the AC/DC song Thunderstruck, Metallica’s Ride the Lightning, just to name a few...). These guys do not disappoint. Made up of only 2 guys playing bass and drums, they make enough of a racket for 10. They run a fine line between noise, metal, and math rock, sounding like The Boredoms and early Don Caballero getting into a fist fight. Definitely worth checking out if you like this kind of stuff, but probably not worth checking out if you only listen to slow jams. Hey, to each his own, but I’ll take the rawk.