Upon looking at this collaboration, I could not have been more excited. Neon Indian does a trippy take on pop music; The Flaming Lips does a trippy take on pop music. Both of them worked with similar, though not identical, sounds. I thought it might be an interesting mix.
These four songs have interesting moments, but they seem really indulgent. Neon Indian pretty much bends to Wayne’s own personal preferences. In some instances I feel a certain nostalgia Wayne has for when the Flaming Lips were a more lo-fi and noisy band, particularly the early 90s. Only in “Alan’s Theremin” do you get the sense that Neon Indian added much. Even then, it appears to be a decent attempt at kosmic music, nothing up to the level of say Emeralds or Oneohtrix Point Never.
In fact, the only point which is truly interesting is “Is David Bowie Dying”. Here we get the sense of the fried-out weirdness they failed to capture in the other tracks. On this one, you get some sense of the bizarre drama they could have explored more fully on the rest of the EP.
Basically, there are decent stabs and some clever ideas on here. It ends up being a lot of false starts and screeching noise. While I’m a fan of such things, I feel if the EP got a little more focused; it would ultimately be more interesting. Rather than being released, this might have used some editing to avoid the often tossed-off nature of the music itself.