The Flaming Lips - "Dark Side of the Moon"

It's rare that I download music from iTunes, and even rarer that I read iTunes reviewer comments before purchasing music from iTunes. Those people are the bottom feeders of the Internet, only a genus or two above people who comment on youtube videos. Their only online purpose is to waste millions of key strokes en route to terrible, senseless and juvenile words. This probably has a lot to do with why I purchased The Flaming Lips' cover album of Dark Side of the Moon--the iTune "critics" were bashing it in a seething comment pool of half-wit clauses and emoticons, and I couldn't bring myself to agree with their poorly thought-out cautions.

Part of me, however, does agree with them. I mean, seriously, if there has ever been an album that 1) shouldn't be covered anymore and 2) shouldn't have ever been covered in the first place, it's Dark Side of the Moon. It's one of the greatest, most unique pieces of art in the history of music, and every band--I'm especially looking at you, Phish--has to cover it "in its entirety" and not even come close to paying it the homage it deserves. When I first heard the Lips were doing this, I scoffed. But as I said before, I wasn't about to align myself with the iTunes cretins, so I downloaded it anyway, simply out of spite.

It's actually not that bad. At the very least, it attempts to reinvent DSOTM, rather than replicate it (for example, coughing instead of clock-ticking during the brooding intro of "Time," and those ridiculous synthy munchkin voices on "Money"). Pink Floyd and The Flaming Lips both inhabit different universes, so it's a little bit like solar system jumping. The Flaming Lips' version is more of a space march--much like last year's Embryonic--whereas Pink Floyd created a space odyssey. The former is worth listening to if you're into The Flaming Lips at this point in their career, the later is just worth listening to all the time.