The Flaming Lips – Fight Test (A PopEntertainment.com Music Review)

PopEntertainment
Aug 10, 2003
2 min read

The Flaming Lips – Fight Test (Warner Brothers)

The Flaming Lips have put together a nice, quirky body of work since catching our attention with "She Don't Like Jelly" a few years ago. This covers-heavy EP is only going to add a footnote to their body of work, though. It starts off rather spectacularly with a lovely acoustic "Fight Test."

The real reason most people will hear of this album is their mope-rock cover of Kylie Minogue's recent single "Can't Get You Out Of My Head." There is a long history of slightly arty bands doing total rethinks of pop hits, going back to Aztec Camera's wondrous 1984 acoustic cover of Van Halen's "Jump" and U2's live performances of ABBA's "Dancing Queen." These can be fascinating, but the one ingredient most needed is that you have to feel the band's grudging but true and total love of the song.

This is definitely a very interesting rethink of "Can't Get You Out of My Head," however, you can feel the band's disdain for the source material, and this ruins any quirky fun that could come from it. (At least they didn't go as far as Travis, who used a sample clip from an interview to apologize in advance for their cover of Britney Spears' "...Baby One More Time.") Frankly, it's different from the Minogue original, but even the band's biggest supporters would be hard pressed to say it is better.

There is also a pretty soft guitar cover of Beck's "Golden Age" that again doesn't add much to the original. The band does pull off a lovely psychedelic-vibed take on Radiohead's "Knives Out." The Lips' own songs fare much better here, with "Fight Test" and the electronica dance floor rave up "Do You Realize?" showing off the band's chops in a way that other the writers' songs don't. (6/03)

Alex Diamond