Album review: The Flaming Lips - With a Little Help From My Fwends

These days the Flaming Lips are acting more like a tornado than a band. As they crawl forwards they consume, absorb, and destroy everything before them. Other bands that cross their path get sucked into their vortex – have a play in the eye of the storm – before being ejected back out again to fend for themselves. Tame Impala, Kesha, Peaches, My Morning Jacket, Moby, and many more have been temporarily grafted into the frame work of the psychedelic overlords. Their latest release is perhaps their most audacious: a full-album cover of Sgt Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band. And those tornado victim conspirators? They are present and accounted for in unprecedented numbers.

This is of course not the first time that the Lips have gotten their hands on a sacred cow. In 2009 they gave a similar treatment to one of prog's most cherished landmarks, Dark Side of the Moon. However, given the source material, this approach of alien reinvention made perfect sense. Dark Side is an ode to the madness and isolation of the modern world. Giving it the narcotic overdose treatment that the Lips have been favouring this past decade helped the album regain some of its existential terror. And it is for exactly that reason why With a Little Help From My Fwends stumbles.

The original Sgt Pepper's is the pop equivalent of comfort food. It is a genuine masterpiece that not only helped to define popular music circa 1967 but showed everybody the limitless potential of studio recordings. It was not then, nor ever has been, an album to make you feel uncomfortable. In this revised take however the delicate classicism has been replaced by mind-expanding excess – baroque sensibility with the ceaseless churning of warped electronics and drug-enduced euphoria. This is a version of Sgt Pepper's as seen by those who were influenced by it and under the influence whilst enjoying it. Drenching every track in impenetrable fuzz and hijinks tends to detract from the music rather than enhance it. It would be like playing 'War Pigs' on a xylophone; sure, it's possible, but why would you bother?

Even still, you have to give it The Flaming Lips when it comes to their choice of collaborators. No name is too big, obtuse, or obscure to make it onto their dream team roster. Under their guidance alt-rockers and savants rub shoulders with popsters and MCs. All it takes is one look at the guest list to realize that the personnel on Fwends is as diverse as the faces that graced the cover of Sgt Pepper's itself. Tegan and Sara, Phantogram, J Mascis, Chuck Inglish, Grace Potter … the list goes on.

Out of this motley crew perhaps none were a more controversial choice than Miley Cyrus. What is even more shocking than The Flaming Lips hanging out with the It-girl is that she does an excellent job on both of her songs. Along with Moby she serenades a certain girl named Lucy and takes part in 'A Day in the Life' with New Fumes. With all of these eccentric persons trying to out-weird one another having a bonafide pop artist playing it (relatively) straight is exactly what the doctor ordered. When she picks up Paul McCartney's lines in 'A Day in the Life' through a dubbed-out beat you have little doubt that she means every word of them.

But unfortunately not all of these collaborations work. Some are inspired (Maynard James Keenan playing the role of Mr Kite for example), many others are capable if not exceptional, while more still are downright painful. Listening to The Autumn Defense and Black Pus trade lines in 'With a Little Help From My Friends' is borderline torturous. In their shaky hands Ringo's sing-along star turn falls apart at the seams. In truth the best songs here are the ones that stick closest to their original inspirations. Very little can match the joyous surge of 'Getting Better' and 'Good Morning, Good Morning' and the new, Lips-ified versions here are faithful while still bringing a new edge to the table.

With that being said, not all of the reinventions turn out to be tragedies. With the help of indie rockers Foxygen and MGMT's Ben Goldwasser the reprise of 'Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band' is a bong-blasted treat. The all-too brief frame work of the tune has been teased out and stretched into ungodly shapes that reach for four times the length of the original rendition. Wooly organ vamps, blistering guitar leads, and sonic phasings are glued together by their own pungent aromas.

So what we have is a self-indulgent revisionist take on one of rock's greatest milestones, one that unfortunately misses the mark more often than it hits. The heart of The Flaming Lips is in the right place but what With a Little Help From My Fwends proves is that good intentions cannot undo some suspicious creative decisions.

Rating: B-

For fans of: Acid rock, the trippier side to The Beatles, psychedelic freaks

Recommended tracks: Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite, Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)