The Flaming Lips

In their 28 years of existence, the Flaming Lips have never been still: They are the alt-rock band that made good, the one that used the momentum from their freak 1993 minor hit “She Don't Use Jelly” to build a psychedelic cottage industry in their hometown of Oklahoma City. When many of their ’90s peers struggled desperately to extend their fleeting moment of success, the Flaming Lips were figuring out how to take their audience somewhere new.

In the last 15 years, that playful spirit has carried them through mind-melting experiments (1997's Zaireeka), a stone classic of orchestral rock (1999's The Soft Bulletin), a concept album about robots that included a song recognized by the government of Oklahoma (2002's Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots), a grab-bag of psych-pop weirdness (2006's At War With the Mystics) and finally, coming full circle, another bizarre ride to the far side, 2009's dark and disorienting landmark Embryonic. Along the way, there have been films and strange videos and record releases encased in fur and edible matter. They've buried us in mountains of confetti, rolled over audiences in translucent spheres and emerged onto festival stages through towering representations of genitalia. And through it all, they've never forgotten the songs.

The Flaming Lips may be dwarf stars in the current pop music climate, but they are stars nonetheless, doing things their own way and on their own time. They started small, spending the ’80s crisscrossing the country with other bands that could be your life, steadily building a loyal following with releases on the presciently named independent label Restless. In those days, they were grungy punks with an ear for classic rock, alternating between Zeppelin lunges and three-chord garage rock without concern for fashion. But they had ambitions: A side-long noise collage led to increased focus in the studio, and by the time of 1990's noise-pop classic In a Priest Driven Ambulance, they had carved out their own space in the rock landscape, a territory where the nakedly sincere reading of the jazz-pop standard “What a Wonderful World” could sit easily next to the searing “God Walks Among Us Now.” A year later, they were on Warner Brothers, and the ’90s as a musical idea was starting to take shape. The Flaming Lips would be there through it all, but they were never be limited by it.

Since the departure of guitarist Ronald Jones after the release of their 1995 guitar-squall opus, Clouds Taste Metallic, the Lips have thrived on the creative tension between frontman/ singer/ conceptualist Wayne Coyne, multi-instrumentalist Steven Drozd and bassist/producer Michael Ivins. Whatever their budget, their shows have always been intense multi-media events. In the early days, that meant bargain-basement pyrotechnics. Then came Christmas lights, headphones in concert, and finally, the bacchanalian spectacle of the last decade, which includes a stage full of fans decked out in furry gear, balloons the size of a modest home, fake blood and more, with all the subatomic particles coming together and unfolding themselves in a second. —Mark Richardson