Motorcycles and laser beams introduce a fuzzed-out mid-tempo riff to kick off the technicolor musical epic “Home Thru Hell,” the first track on Deap Lips, the new collaborative project from Deap Vally and the Flaming Lips. The song’s lyrics have fantastical tendencies alluding to classic prog-rock fare such as vultures and hypnotizer’s spells, while lines like “Riding along through the deep valley/Where the dragons of madness roam” and “Taking all my wisdom/From the flaming lips of youth” creatively shout out the band names of the two groups involved in this super-collaboration. “Home Thru Hell” acts as a bold and brilliant overture for an album that is brimming with fun and off-the-wall musical treats, including light rapping, robot voices, a Steppenwolf cover, and wild synth and guitar tones throughout.
Listening to Deap Lips, it’s easy to hear the musical characteristics of both Deap Vally and the Flaming Lips, but each band’s sounds have been so well-kneaded into the musical dough of this project that the album came out of the oven sounding truly original. It’s no surprise that this crew could cook up something fresh as both bands are seasoned collaborators: The Flaming Lips are well-known for working with a wide range of artists, from Miley Cyrus and Kesha to Mick Jones and the White Stripes, while Deap Vally have been working on a collaborative album with artists such as KT Tunstall, Peaches, and members of bands like Warpaint and Queens of the Stone Age.
As a guitar and drum two-piece, Deap Vally have just the right amount of room in their sound for two Flaming Lips to join in with synthesizers, bass, some guitars, and a handful of songs. Guitarist Lindsey Troy explains, “When you’re in a two-piece, people are always asking, ‘Will you add a third member?’ So this is our way of experimenting with that. It was fun to throw someone else in the room to change up the dynamic and it’s been great. We just thought we’d do one song with the Flaming Lips. We didn’t know it was gonna turn into a whole record, but it’s amazing that it did.”
It took some kismet for the two bands to come together. In 2016, Wayne Coyne was in Raleigh, North Carolina, meeting with the creator of the “World’s Largest Gummy Bear” about making some props for the Lips when he checked out a show by Wolfmother, where Deap Vally was opening. He tracked down Lindsey at the merch booth and the two hit it off immediately. It was only a matter of time before Lindsey hit up Coyne with the proposal to work on some music together, and in early 2018 she and drummer Julie Edwards were on their way to Wayne’s home studio, Pink Floor, to work with Coyne and fellow-Lip Steven Drozd. “We went out to Oklahoma City and stayed with Wayne at his house and wrote and recorded for five days, had a really great time, made some awesome stuff,” says Troy. “After that, he kept sending us more ideas and was eventually like, ‘Let’s do a full album.’ He’d send us stuff and we’d go into the studio in L.A. and send him stuff and that’s how the rest of it got finished.”
The Flaming Lips + Deap Vally = Deap Lips. The self-titled album is out now:
The Fat Angel Sings 