One Day Holiday - The Dark Side of the Dark Side of the Moon



What kind of glue Wayne Coyne and co were sniffing when they made that cover of Pink Floyd's magnum opus Dark Side of the Moon? Well for one thing, we are already at this stage well acquainted with Flaming Lips' materials; but the end result of this (not so) latest venture sounds like it is on the wrong shade of the spectrum. Or perhaps a much stronger hue of the rainbow?

The Flaming Lips and Stardeath and White Dwarfs with Henry Rollins and Peaches Doing the Dark Side of the Moon (the whole stretch is by the way is the title of the album), released in 2009, or 2010 if availability in the market in Malaysia is to be taken into account, is, as anyone could have probably guessed, the Oklahoma-based acid heads' remake of the classic 1973 epic record. The original album is a monumental record, largely for the theme of the lyrics that covers on matters ranging from life and death to politics, war, and mental illness (lunacy). Not to mention the music which, unlike other pre and post-Dark Side releases, their music does not meander aimlessly in search of any stable and coherent structure. The whole album felt bespoke and meticulously, carefully constructed from the ground up so as to perfectly capture the theme that was contained within the lyrics. In fact, our Goosebumps feature was actually in part inspired from this album - never there has been an album where the song and lyrics have come together as a unified, single entity bearing a message.

Knowing Flaming Lips and the 'playful' nature of their music, it was not entirely surprising that the end result sounded... well, their trademark sound is plastered all over the album cover anyway - anyone can straight away tell it from the get go. Seeing that it was released in quick succession right after Embryonic, there are parts in the album that reminded us of the said album especially in terms of song arrangement - where in the original album, it all swells up majestically, Flaming Lips and a bunch of guest musicians went for a zany attack right from the word go, and that is pretty typical of them. Most apparent changes is in the song arrangement - almost all songs were broken apart and restructured so as to fit the Flaming Lips style of playing.

Is it a bad thing then? Well, we don't dare to say so because initially we weren't expecting this album to stick faithfully to the original source anyway; and Flaming Lips being Flaming Lips, we were quite pleased that the quirkiness has not disappeared in the process of remaking such a serious and sobering album. The Londoners who made the album in the 70's knew that when the album will be released, people (at the time) will be spending most of the time listening to the album while lying on the floor, stoned and wasted. Not sure if it makes a good drug companion originally, but with this remake, it sounds trippy. Oh and not forgetting, it sounds mental as Hell. "The Great Gig in the Sky", the song where Clare Torry went absolutely lunatic like a wolf howling at the moon, Peaches's take of the same track however is just barking mad.



P/S: Oh and one more thing we forgot to mention - the bitching guitar shred has went missing in this 2009 version. We no like this very much...