Edwin Arnaudin – Staff Writer

Rating: 0 Stars

If the promise of music’s coolest weirdos rocking out with guest artists ranging from Ke$ha to Nick Cave sounds too good to be true, that’s because it is.  Instead of a grandiose all-star spectacle, the official release of Record Store Day special The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends is a disaster and its name-dropping merely a ruse for some of the worst experimental music of all time.

The album’s title is firmly about featuring famous colleagues and the track listing says there are guest stars, but where are they?  While something like Sparklehorse and Danger Mouse’s Dark Night of the Soul (on which Lips frontman Wayne Coyne batted lead-off) gave each guest a generous platform on which to showcase their sound, here the distinct vocals of supposed contributors Jim James and Alex Ebert are nowhere to be found.  Consumed by the Lips’ spacey instrumentation, their individualism is sacrificed for the greater good of this messy album, raising the question of why they were included at all.

With no unifying element, other than a general spacey groove of Pink Floyd-wannabe grandeur, Heady Fwends is D.O.A.  Full of shrill distorted guitar and grating vocals, the album tortures the ear and tests the listener’s patience, daring one to persevere to the final track of this horrible joke.  Those who make it through the entire thing deserve a medal, but anyone who listens to it again deserves a trip to the looney bin.

Don’t Miss – William Hung’s Inspiration.  No, seriously.

OK to Skip – the entire album