Editor’s Note: This is the third installment of Mood Music — a feature in which I will deconstruct an album each month, analyzing it as it relates to the bipolar experience.
I can think of no album that is happier than The Flaming Lips’ 1993 noise-pop masterpiece Transmissions From the Satellite Heart. Well, maybe Pet Sounds, but that’s from another era.
The Flaming Lips weren’t rock stars with confetti cannons and amazing onstage visuals at the time of this album’s release. They didn’t have songs spotlighted in blockbuster movies like Batman Forever, which featured their song “Bad Days.” Or timeless hits like “Do You Realize?” which was highlighted in commercials. They had Christmas lights — lots and lots of chasing Christmas lights — decorating the stage. And a bubble machine.
Transmissions is best known for “She Don’t Use Jelly,” a goofy short story of a tune about a woman who dyes her hair orange with tangerines. It could’ve been construed as a one-hit-wonder. Thing is, the Flaming Lips have 17 — yes, 17 — studio albums. Transmissions was their sixth.
With delay effect and super-fuzzy distortion pedals, this album echoes with delight. Your mood will be instantly elevated upon first listen. It’s weird in the best way possible.
Let me take you back to Music 101 here. In music, there are two keys: major and minor. Major keys sound bright and cheerful. Minor keys are melancholic. There isn’t a single song in a minor key on Transmissions From The Sattelite Heart. Except for one, but it changes to a major key for the verse. Even the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band has a song — “Fixing a Hole” — with a minor key, and that’s considered to be one of the happiest albums of all time.
On “Superhumans,” frontman Wayne Coyne drops lyrics that sound straight out of a children’s book.
Once in a while
The zebras run
To the spaceman and his gun
In the spider’s web
In fact, the whole album is kid-friendly – minus “Moth in the Incubator,” a song with a chorus of “your incubator is so tight.” (You can skip that one if playing for your hipster toddler. Guaranteed they will frolic and dance to the rest of the album).
The storybook lyrics continue on “Be My Head,” a song that bleeds with a jolly if not twisted hook about noggins:
You can be my head
Oh, they’ve eaten this one
Putting swirls in this giant hole
You can be my head
‘Cause I can’t afford to buy one
Seeking stars in its other side
The Flaming Lips would go on to make The Soft Bulletin, the 1999 album that made it to number-three on indie bible Pitchfork’s Top Albums of the ‘90s list. The Soft Bulletin and its follow-up,Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, both made it into a book called 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.
But it’s Transmissions that has stayed with me through the years. Maybe it’s because I was only 13 years old when I first heard it. It was a happy reprieve from the terrors of high school.
Watch the video for “She Don’t Use Jelly” and subscribe to a special Mood Music: Flaming Lips playlist on Spotify below. There are bonus tracks.
