I am Kyle's self-indulgence

Billboard confirms recent rumors that the next Flaming Lips release will be a double album.

I wasn't sure what to think of this at first. I've come to realize that At War With The Mystics is not as solid an album as The Soft Bulletin or Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. It has some great songs on it, but it has some duds too. If the band wants two albums' worth of songs, that's great, but it might be wise to just pick the best of them to assemble a normal-length album (much like Sufjan Stevens did for Illinois).

But then I got to reading the article, and I actually liked a lot of Wayne Coyne's reasons for going with a double album:

"And some of my favorite records – thinking Beatles 'White Album,' Zeppelin's 'Physical Graffiti' and even some of the longer things that the Clash have done – part of the reason I like them is that they're not focused. They're kind of like a free-for-all and go everywhere.

...

"I think with this there was an element of accidentally stumbling upon more spontaneous sort of freak-out stuff," Coyne says. "We were sitting at (drummer) Steven's house and we just started out having these freak-out jam sessions where he'd play drums and I'd play bass and we just would sort of do freaky stuff. Some of those recordings, even though they're not recorded very well, really had a spontaneity about them that we probably wouldn't have purposely done.

When I read that, I have to admit that my favorite Flaming Lips albums are some of their older ones (or at least their middle period, from Hit To Death In The Future Head to Clouds Taste Metallic), before the highly orchestrated production of The Soft Bulletin. Even their earliest work, though rough, has a reckless playfulness that I like. If the band wants to move back to being more spontaneous, that sounds good.

And his point about The White Album being all over the place is a valid one, but I think it's very difficult to pull off, and could very easily fail.

I'm ready to see The Flaming Lips try, though.