Fire Track: The Flaming Lips – “God Will Control The Werewolves”

Fire Track · Third Man Records

The Flaming Lips Are Back With “God Will Control the Werewolves”

Wayne Coyne and company announce their 17th studio album The Teardrop Throbs, arriving January 22 via Third Man Records, with a first single that sounds exactly like Pink Floyd if Syd Barrett had never left.

The Flaming Lips have not released a proper studio album since 2020’s American Head, and the first thing off The Teardrop Throbs makes the wait feel worthwhile. “God Will Control the Werewolves” started as a memory Wayne Coyne has of playing hide and seek with his two sons at the park as it was getting dark, a full moon overhead, one of the boys asking whether the werewolves would get them while they hid. “I told him God would control the werewolves for a little bit while we played hide n seek,” Coyne writes in the album notes. The song that came out of that moment is enormous and gauzy and genuinely lovely, with a drift to it that marks the Flaming Lips at their most spacious.

The Teardrop Throbs was produced by The Flaming Lips alongside Taylor Johnson, Dave Fridmann, Scott Booker, and additional production from Jon and Mike Fridmann. It is their first album for Third Man Records, and at 13 tracks it is a substantial piece of work, roaming across grief, fatherhood, the texture of the everyday, and a few detours into sci-fi mythology that only this band could pull off with a straight face. Coyne’s liner notes for the album are extraordinary on their own terms: a long, handwritten account of where each song came from, told with the particular disorganized warmth that makes him one of the most distinctive voices in American rock.

The band follows the album with a series of two-night stands in Nashville, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and London in January through April. Pre-orders are open now on digital, CD, and vinyl, including a limited “Teardrop Blue” pressing.

Pre-Order The Teardrop Throbs ↗

1Throb

2God Will Control the Werewolves

3Titan

4Every Teardrop Cried

5Hooray

6Instructions On How To Draw An Eyeball or How To Deal With A Loved One Who Is Addicted To Drugs

7You See You In Me

8You’ve Got Brain Damage

9At the End of the Day

10The Trees Are Getting Their Leaves / Ceasefire In The City of Singing Flame

11Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell Part Two

12A Sunset Far Away

13Now I Understand