The Dark Side of the Moon is an album that, despite its indisputable status as an art-rock classic, I have increasingly avoided over the years. Were my iPod library a physical collection of discs and records, Dark Side would be among those having accumulated the most undeserved neglect. Perhaps I have snubbed Pink Floyd’s masterpiece because of its popularity. Saying that Dark Side is your favorite album of all time is akin to saying that Robert Frost is your favorite poet or that Dane Cook is your favorite comedian. But, truth be told, The Dark Side of the Moon is an incredible album. I rediscovered that recently when I gave it a spin to brush off the metaphorical dust. It may not be quite worthy of the hyperbolic love it has received, but it is doubtlessly a timeless piece of work.
Flash forward to the year 2009, 36 years after Pink Floyd released The Dark Side of the Moon. Oklahoma’s defacto state band, The Flaming Lips, have just released their twelfth studio album, Embryonic, to critical acclaim after the mediocre At War With the Mystics. The album effectively revitalizes the band’s relevance in the musical realm. Doubters of the band’s creativity are silenced. So what do ringleader Wayne Coyne and his fearless freaks decide to do next with this magnificent momentum that they’ve acquired? Why, to re-record Dark Side, of course! Sounds like an interesting concept, doesn’t it? Well, it does…but The Flaming Lips don’t pull it off. At all. Instead, they create an absolute train wreck of a cover album. If the original Pink Floyd version is a meticulously formulated dreamscape, the Lips version is a sloppy nightmare. It does no justice to the original. It is a gimmick. It is a farce.
Opening track “Speak to Me/Breathe” takes the spoken line, “I’ve been mad for fucking years,” and butchers it. The delivery is half-assed and unbelievable, as if the speaker isn’t even trying. All of a sudden, The Dark Side of the Moon has become a high school production of a Shakespeare play. What I mean is that The Flaming Lips – and their partners in crime, Stardeath and White Dwarfs – have misinterpreted a classic. I realize that accuracy was not part of this album’s plan, but there is a fine line between reworking an album and destroying its integrity through reinterpretation. “Money,” a fan favorite from the 1973 original, here is presented as a satire. Not only is the new version unfaithful to the original, but also the musicianship itself is awful. The rest of the album is not much better. Nostalgic Pink Floyd enthusiasts will be disappointed to hear this, but this is the truth: there is nothing redeeming about The Flaming Lips’ cover of The Dark Side of the Moon.
This album’s failure may largely be due to the Lips’ recent experimentation with the raw and the abrasive, as demonstrated in Embryonic. Simply put, The Flaming Lips’ new style just doesn’t fit with Pink Floyd’s dreamy prog-rock. Maybe if this project had been pursued during the time of The Soft Bulletin the outcome would have been better.
