The Soft Bulletin

like they were pretty...

In the 90s, Pet Sounds was pretty revered in the... rock circles, you know, that was around the time when it felt like every band had to make their own version of Pet Sounds, you know, or be influenced by it in some way, you know, whether it was Summer Teeth, or, you know, Soft Bulletin, or other bands that just were sort of super, like all the Elephant Six stuff.

So that would surprise me if they, you know, maybe they did.

So I think they gave it a 7 out of 10, and they said...

And like, you know, it made it so that these kind of more orchestral sounds I knew would be in good hands.

There's a lot less guitar in this record than previous records, but when he made The soft bulletin.

I know one of the things going in was they wanted to make a heavier record without Munch's guitar.

So we'd seen him do that before and he's really competent, obviously.

That's an understatement.

So it felt like a relief where we could push ourselves in ways we hadn't before, knowing that Dave would make us sound good.

It's funny you mentioned the Soft Bulletin.

I feel like your record, Hotel Lusona and Soft Bulletin kind of share that similar bombastic kind of spirit, particularly in the percussion section and things like that.

He's done so many great records.

But w- like, one of the things that drew me to him was that, like, for The Soft Bulletin, I think the idea of that album was to make, uh, an album as heavy as possible with, like, as little guitar as possible.

And that idea resonated with me because writing the music just at home, I realized that, like, oh, I'm not even...

I didn't even write guitar parts for a lot of these songs.

And again, really mono squash, this kind of like just blown out drumming.

It kind of reminds me actually of, um, I don't know, the beginning, like the first track, I think it's called Race for the Prize on that wonderful Flaming Lips record, Soft Bulletin, which the beginning starts with like just one mic'd kind of drums in a room that's just really dirty and noisy.

And so I don't know, again, when you're, when you're using, when you're pulling out like Flaming Lips comps, like there's something like uncharacteristically playful going on here.

And then, yeah, I just love, as the listeners noted, this is where I use the word, like, you know, I started using the word vosed, like the B gets totally vosed in the middle.

They

had some great studio albums like The Soft Bulletin in 99 and Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots in 2002.

And they set aside traditional guitar rock in favor of symphonic pop orchestration and, of course, philosophical lyricism, Wayne Coyne.

At the same time, their live performances evolved into interactive theatrical events featuring giant inflatable human Zorb balls, confetti cannons, laser gloves, and costumed mascot troops.

The best rock albums of '99.

The Flaming Lips, The Soft Bulletin.

Nine Inch Nails, The Fragile.

Oh, shit.

that is too bad because they had some they had some bangers man back in the day

yeah i so look looking back I think the Soft Bulletin is the last record that I really give a shit about.

Yeah.

I think Yoshimi is where their heads went fully up their ass.

Yeah.

I think

they were starting with Soft Bulletin going up their own ass.

But by Yoshimi, he was fully up his own ass.