The Flaming Lips Reveal New Album The Teardrop Throbs

Two months after they drop the 20th anniversary edition of At War With the Mystics, The Flaming Lips will return with their first new album in seven years (and 17th in total). The Teardrop Throbs, the band’s debut on Third Man Records, arrives January 22. The release also marks the psych-rockers first LP in 35 years to not feature multi-instrumentalist Steven Drozd, who is no longer in the band (reasons for why vary depending on the party). Teardrop is led by single “God Will Control the Werewolves”—which you can listen to below—along with a sequel to Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots’ “Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell.”

“I’ve always liked it when songs from previous records get a new rendering,” Coyne said about “Ego Tripping Part Two” in a very long, grammatically insane statement accompanying the release (you can read the full 2,000-plus word missive below). “It’s not the same song but it is dealing with Ego death.. what is status and power and the struggle to turn it into something useful..and this again is an attempt to capture the idea of Syd Barrett fronting Pink Floyd and instead of singing about money ( Money was a big single off Dark Side Of The Moon) he , Syd, chooses to sing about a queen killing the king and stealing his crown to melt it down and make sword out of it ..ha!!!”

Following its release, Coyne and co. will present The Teardrop Throbs—which was produced by the band alongside Taylor Johnson, Dave Fridmann, and Scott Booker, with additional production by Jon and Mike Fridmann—at a handful of intimate shows. Those dates are also listed below.

Revisit our 2020 review of the Lips’ American Head.

The Teardrop Throbs:
01 Throb
02 God Will Control the Werewolves
03 Titan
04 Every Teardrop Cried
05 Hooray
06 Instructions On How to Draw An Eyeball or How To Deal With a Loved One Who Is Addicted to Drugs
07 You See You In Me
08 You’ve Got Brain Damage
09 At the End of the Day
10 The Trees Are Getting Their Leaves / Ceasefire in the City of Singing Flame
11 Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell Part Two
12 A Sunset Far Away
13 Now I Understand

The Flaming Lips:
01-22 Nashville, TN – Brooklyn Bowl
01-23 Nashville, TN – Brooklyn Bowl
01-26 New York, NY – Irving Plaza
01-27 New York, NY – Irving Plaza
02-23 Los Angeles, CA – The Bellwether
02-24 Los Angeles, CA – The Bellwether
02-27 Chicago, IL – Metro
02-28 Chicago, IL – Metro
04-02 London, England – O2 Shepherds Bush
04-03 London, England – O2 Shepherds Bush

Wayne Coyne:

I was sitting in the car in the Trader Joe’s parking lot. Little Rex was 3 years old at that time and he was sleeping in the backseat. I would check on him looking in the rearview mirror. And ( like all fathers with little kids ) was astonished at how beautiful and perfect he was and if anything happened to him ( like illness or bad accident) my life would be destroyed.. I think all parents probably have these types of thoughts a hundred times every day. So with these things floating around my head I noticed a sign ( for I guess one of the establishments in the strip mall:: that the Trader Joe’s was in) .. it read Children’s Death Foundation… I immediately thought of my mother , as a teenager ,assisting  the nuns at her Catholic junior high school with grieving families that had just suffered the loss of a child. I imagined the cold nights sitting with strangers consoling and understanding them and attempting to hold their family together…it was just my imagination running away with me and I looked up again at little Rex in the backseat and again at this sign..I had mis-read it .. it actually said Children’s HEALTH Foundation not Children’s DEATH Foundation …I had done that a couple other times where , I guess, I had death on my mind . I remember being at the State Fair and seeing Funnel Cakes as Funeral Cakes .. but this flash of my mother volunteering at the Children’s Death Foundation had solidified in my mind and already moved me so, even though I was wrong the damage or the epiphany had already been done.

It occurred to me there will never be anything in my life as important as my two little boys.. So.. I am lucky. To have arrived at the greatest of the greatest purposes in life ..yes.. I am here. But also we ( The Flaming Lips ) are making a new record and what’s in your mind usually finds its way into your music whether you intend it to or not .The first song on this new record was also the first song that presented itself in this 2 year process.

The song Throb is a snippet from the soundtrack to the movie The Night of the Hunter.. I always loved the music in this movie and especially the Pretty Fly song that the little girl sings as her and her brother float down the river having just escaped being kidnapped by the evil preacher guy. I had set A.J. ( Adam Judd Slaughter) our new slide guitar player (he can actually play everything including drums) to task of doing a note for note re-playing of the Pretty Fly song and he did a long beginning and a long end that I didn’t recognize.. but it was really evocative.. and so without knowing where this would go we began to put some guitars and drum machines to it ..it was a longer piece of music that included the Pretty Fly song that I changed the lyrics to ( about a dreary hospital ) and this small section is all that survived ( for now ) and it was in keeping with the Children’s Death Foundation vision I had .. the movie The Night of the Hunter is really a  nightmare about children in peril..

The second track God Will Control the Werewolves started as a little story about my 2 boys ( Bloom and Rex) and me playing hide and seek at the park as it was getting dark outside. We had all become very aware of the moon cycles when we stayed at an ocean view Airbnb about a month previous . The full moon had sucked all the water out of this ocean cove area and we walked a quarter mile out in the seabed seeing strange ocean creatures attached to the rocks .. but yes.. because of the moon we had this amazing adventure so it was fresh in our minds and on this evening of hide and seek it was luckily another full moon.. Bloom asked me if, while him and Rex were hiding , the werewolves would get them ( they had also watched a few werewolf movies and knew that the full moon was the time when the werewolves were out and about ) and I told him God would control the werewolves for a little bit while we played hide n seek.. The way I heard the song sounding ( in my head ) was kind of Pink Floyd Dark Side Of The Moon BUT Syd Barrett is still in the band .. ha..

The third track was a throbbing little song that Tommy ( our bass player ) cooked up on his home Pro-Tools rig .. when it arrived it was called .. I think .. Matrix .. it was menacing but also kind of hyper and it was a fun mood to insert right after the slow dark God Will Control the Werewolves track. We added some Mellotron flutes and an awkward chord break in the middle. And left it alone for a bit . And then one morning I was walking to the Tim Hortons down the road from Dave Fridmann’s studio ( it’s almost 2 miles there) and I had this song ( this Matrix song ) running through my head and I had my phone out and I got a text from Perry Farrell.. he sent a little poem about ( hold on let me find the text ) being like a frog and jumping from one idea of life to another .. jump lightly and don’t mess up your lillypads .. ( how great is that !!) and I was reminded of his crazy intense singing ( like Coming Down The Mountain.. that song ) and pictured a high energetic voice screaming some advice about taking action !! The Frogs are Jumping oh oh!! The Sun’s eruptin let’s go!! The Titans are hunting !! The stars are melting Let’s go!!! Matt did some amazing high singing and Improvising that really opened up a new melodic sense that The Flaming Lips hadn’t played with before.

The next track Every Teardrop Cried started as just one line .. it was meant to be just an interlude between songs .. it started that day in the Trader Joe’s parking lot ..the line was “Every drop of rain that falls is you…” referring again to the death of a child ( a believe it had been about a year since Nell had died ) seeing this child in every thing that is sublime .. and I thought one line really summed it up..but I couldn’t stop and added another line and another ..the middle verse “you’re in my eyes”.. “you’re in my ears”. “and when I cry you’re in my tears” .. when i sang it , i think i wrote it and sang at the same time .. It seemed like a song that had already been around forever .

The song Hooray started out being connected to the song At The End of the Day .. but quickly became too big and we trimmed it down and made it two songs instead of one big long song . It started out as a Sci-Fi / Spy adventure type song. It was originally about a blonde secret agent super-freak woman and she steals the president’s brain and is on the run from some futuristic Russian assassins..Katy my wife heard it and thought .. this sounded so sweet and longing ( she was listening from another room) and now that I hear the words and realize you’re singing about the president’s brain.. you must change it .. people will think you’re talking about Trump and it’s too beautiful to have anyone think of Trump .. you must change it ..ha.. so .. of course I changed it ..

The song Instructions on how to draw an eyeball or how to deal with a loved one who is addicted to drugs is a simple simple song that I kind of made up as I sang it into the microphone. “I don’t know why but I just keep on trying again and again”.. it’s a mantra mostly .. like something you tell yourself hoping that it’s true.

The song You See You in Me .. these great little splatters of guitar rhythms ( with lyrics) da da da dada da da“ There one goes!!! Dadada (kind of machine gun) Another one goes” made us all laugh. That the song would really do that..Using the song structure as sound effect to tell the story.. The original take of the song went a couple minutes longer at the end.  With A.J’s slide guitars getting crunchier as it went and the distorted string patch that Derek played .getting more and more distorted..we couldn’t decide where to stop.. luckily some time passed and eventually we were with Dave Fridmann and without any struggle we made the song a few minutes shorter and added to the very end an unexpected message “the flames reach higher”

Sometimes there is an energy when a song is being made that is in the actual MAKING of it and upon LISTENING later you understand that.. the energy is NOT in the listening …so.. making it shorter kept the song alive instead of it running out of steam as it built. But these are the mechanisms of recording that I sometimes fear can take the magic out of a song.. to think of a song as drum parts and string parts and bass parts all haphazardly thrown together maybe does the song a disservice. This song has some kind of pure enthusiasm that you can’t really put into words.

The song You’ve Got Brain Damage is, I believe, the first song I wrote that signaled we were making a new album. A.J. had a simple droning chord progression that I heard on his Bandcamp album and I asked him if I could turn it into a song . I went to his house and we chopped up that song ( on his home Pro-Tools set up) and I sang over top of it. I had been ruminating late into the previous night about drugs and alcohol causing brain damage. Just thinking about all the humans I’ve known who have fucked themselves up and how sad it is.. how some people are just beyond help and nothing can reach them .. and hoping I haven’t done that to myself..or that I NEVER do that to myself … jeez.. but maybe I’m damaged and I don’t realize it.. like maybe my oldest brother dosed me with some potent LSD micro-dot when I was 8 years old and I never came down and this my long long hallucination of my life and my body is actually laying in some forgotten medical bed and I’m just drooling on myself twitching from paranoia… jeez.. if it’s true don’t wake me …

The track At The End of the Day started out as a song with lyrics and melody .. I was playing guitar and singing in my kitchen and Katy ( my wonderful wife) she began singing this line “At the end of the day”…. I quickly turned it into a little song about how in the fall the shadows of the oncoming evening make you melancholy and slightly depressed but also kind of a comforting distress .. the trees are dying :: you are dying :: the sun is dying …we began to add some instrumentation to this little chord progression and it quickly revealed itself ( the song did ) as more powerful WITHOUT my narration..

I still feel like I will return to it someday..

The song The Trees Are Getting Their Leaves ( Ceasefire in The City of The Singing Flame) .. this is an imaginary city street and I am witnessing all the new life emerging from the end of the war.. “The trees are getting their leaves .. the cold burst violence is over.. the flowers melted the screams .. the Holy Virgin’s Transmitting”… the holy virgin ( in my story ) is an underground radio station that was broadcasting a freedom poem on endless loop..

This segues into Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell Part 2::: .. I’ve always liked it when songs from previous records ( Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell is a song off of our 2002 album Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots) get a new rendering .. it’s not the same song but it is dealing with Ego death.. what is status and power and the struggle to turn it into something useful..and this again is an attempt to capture the idea of Syd Barrett fronting Pink Floyd and instead of singing about money ( Money was a big single off Dark Side Of The Moon) he , Syd, chooses, instead of singing about money to sing about a queen killing the king and stealing his crown to melt it down and make sword out of it ..ha!!!

The long ending of Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell Part 2 dissolves into the beginning of A Sunset Far Away. A Sunset Far Away is probably about some beautiful but tumultuous situation that is better left in the distance ..and to still feel optimistic about it .. ha.. the middle section lingers as the voice from beyond watches the sun go down down down down .. lower and lower ..

The last track is an instrumental called Now I Understand is the orchestration that was behind an ending of another song ..we discarded ( for now ) the song structure and singing and drums and guitars and for The Teardrop Throbs presented it as this cosmic drama that seems to have a happy resolve ..

.. so .. dear reader .. please keep in mind there are a thousand things that go into making a song .. I don’t really believe any song has a fixed meaning .. and I don’t WANT my songs to have a fixed meaning .. I think the song should be allowed to affect your mood and feelings regardless of how we ( as The Flaming Lips) played it and put it together..these notes are just some talking points to help make it easy to have some insight that you can use when reviewing and discussing this album ..

I am glad to talk about anything you are interested in..

Love love love

Wayne 2026