I did find one good thing. A Google Image Search for “Amy Phillips” returns a predominance of attractive women. Bonus! Meanwhile, a Google Image Search for “Pitchfork” returns nothing but uglys.

You can download the audio of the panel here.

I don’t think Wayne Coyne can release an album of music that can be played with four people anymore. Pre-Recorded tracks aside, You cannot recreate what The Flaming Lips do on album live with four people playing instruments. I’m sure even the most accomplished user of a loop pedal would toil for hours before saying “It just can’t be done, man, here’s your $500 back.” I gave him $500 dollars (my birthday money this year) and told him he could keep it if he could put out a Lips-like production arranged for a four-piece band that didn’t bore the audience with looping. I figure he’d score the different elements and then divde by 4 and that would be how long it’d take the band to get everything ready.

I imagine that Wayne is a tinkerer, content to mess around in the studio for 12 months adding harmonies to this, vocals to that, and running this piano melody through a flanger and then playing it backwards so you get the whooshing sound as the notes are played, and he makes it sound like each note is a volume palindrome. Aside from the initial conception and final product, I am sure that there were many points in the production of these songs that you could call it a finished product, so it’s gotta be a tough job as a musician to say “Okay, this is done.” I assume you just know after you put the third version of reverb on the vocals and fourth effect on lead guitar that you say “Perfect! Dave, come listen to this!”

“Listen, you’ll hear it / we’re gettin’ near it / It’s comin’ I can feel it / ’cause I know you’re goin’ away”

The closing track of this amalgam of old and new, reference and ponderance, is very fitting. Opening as a simple piano and vocal number, “Goin’ On” is a crushing ode to acceptance and perfectly frames what it’s like on the cusp of rejecting it. The sense of finality evoked by the end of the song when he sings “We’re goin’.. on..” is so devastating that ending this album it keeps you placated for a moment before you realize music is over. The song encloses the path created by “The Sound Of Failure / It’s Dark… Is It Always This Dark?” As if the character is older, but still exasperated by the begrudging optimism many people expect you to have in the face of hard times. The notion of choosing failure, or asking for help in hard times reminds me how I like when people have to set things aside to deal with strife and how glorious they appear when they’re not trying to take advantage of you unconsciously, or not.

Subtly, or not, The Flaming Lips will ensnare your conscious and fill it with existential ponderings, only these are the good kind, where you decide to have fun with it, instead of be paralyzed by dancing on the cusp of the “universal truth”.

If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go lie down with the stereo on. It’s simply a great album.

The book, titled “The Case Of The Missile Crisis!” continues where the comic left off last year, the Tinkle family on the run from the law and a shadow government organization that is in league with extraterrestials. The Wigu Story up to this point has been quite the series of more convoluted experiences divided by “Chapter Days” wherein an adventure would take place over a day. The format will likely change to encompass long running stories over however long it takes, judging from the proposed titles of the next books: “The Case of Atlantis,” “The Case of Life on Mars” and “The Case of The Collapse of Western Civilization.” It sounds like, in Rowland’s words, “an ambitious little yarn.” You can read a short preview of the comic here.

Rowland’s other webcomic, a journal type comic, OverCompensating continues its pace abound, updating daily and also serving as an announcement annex of his LiveJournal. OverCompensating follows the adventures and flights of fancy that Rowland endures day after day and its topics range the entire gamut of Existentialism to meeting the God of the Internet, a chimera-like creature.

You can find a very good interview with Jeff Rowland at The Webcomics Examiner here.

There’s rumblings that the Flaming Lips will be in L.A. at the end of this month filming a video for the excellent “The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song” I would so totally show up for an extras call, if I lived near LA, although I kinda do already.

This video is in mov format so those of you with fifth gen. iPods should be able to watch it straight away without encoding down, yes? (right click->save as, please.) embed:

What is the caramel on this EP? A lot of things. Carson Ellis’ duet on ‘Charlie’, Chris Funk’s Banjoin’ on the same track, the unadulaterated rockingness that is Meloy’s treatment of ‘Barbara Allen’ (it is some serious rocking), the whining guitars remnicient of a horse’s braying, or the simple, yet powerful vocal closer ‘I Drew My Ship’. All told, Meloy punctuates the reason these songs have been with us so long as to enter into tradition.

Part of a ‘limited’ edition of 3000, the EPs are the result of a successful tour last winter, where Meloy sold ‘Colin Meloy Sings Morrissey’. Meloy has said that these short solo tours help break up the monotony of touring with The Decemberists, and I daresay they might improve his songwriting by A) giving him fresh stimulus being on the road alone, B) trying out some new material on fans who likely are attracted to his songwriting. Kill Rock Stars is recording all these solo shows for a possible Live CD. Last fall, The Decemberists’ final show in Oregon was recorded, although there were reports that the performance and recording was riddled with problems, one camera crane nearly knocking a band member off stage.

Perhaps signing to Capitol will bring the capital to hire a seasoned camera crew to bring the Decemberists stage experience to DVD properly in the future. Here’s hoping good things, whatever they may be, if the quality of this latest EP is any indication.