Dessert Island Disco, Day 8

The Soft Bulletin
Flaming Lips

Mortality is a fact of life. We will all die, every one of us and everyone we love or hate or know tangentially. Everyone. Our bodies will disintegrate into the earth that spawned us while bugs eat us, plants eat us, the dirt eats us. We'll molder and decay and the world will keep spinning through the vast blackness of space, until that too dies suddenly one technicolored Wednesday morning and all you can think of is love.

You wouldn't expect morbid thoughts like this to be the basis of the last great psychedelic album of the 20th century, but when you're dealing with the Flaming Lips, you learn to expect the unexpected. From the anthemic opening track "Race For the Prize," a tale of two scientists racing for some sort of cure to some sort of disease (maybe death itself?) through to the dusky instrumental closer, "Sleeping On the Roof," we're treated to a gorgeous, layered and trippy album about life, death, love and space.

You know, the important stuff.

Listen to it while you watch the night horizon for signs of rescue, fighting off hallucinations brought on by malnutrition, dehydration and that spider bite on your hand.