The Flaming Lips unveiled a fresh album today, a long-anticipated successor to 2020’s American Head. The Teardrop Throbs is slated for a January release and represents two major shifts for the band. For one, it will arrive on Jack White’s Third Man Records, marking the first Lips LP since 1990’s In A Priest Driven Ambulance not to be issued by Warner. Not only is this the Lips’ first indie release in 37 years, it’s also their first without core member Steven Drozd since 1992’s Hit To Death In The Future Head.
Drozd joined the Lips as a drummer in 1991, eventually growing into a multi-instrumentalist and a foundational architect of their sound alongside founder and frontman Wayne Coyne. He departed the band in 2024 amid controversy, with Coyne asserting that Drozd quit and Drozd alleging he was fired. In an interview with Stereogum earlier this year, Drozd offered his perspective, explaining that when he left to enter addiction treatment, Coyne opted to press ahead with band activities without him: “I went back to treatment. And he just stopped talking to me. That was it. That was me basically being fired from the group. So, you know, I didn’t leave. I was fired. I guess you could say I left because I’m the one that went to treatment, you know what I mean, and didn’t play the shows that were coming up.” Drozd has since been working on his solo debut album.
The lead single from The Teardrop Throbs was released today. It’s titled “God Will Control The Werewolves.” Alongside Coyne, bandmates Matthew Kirksey and Derek Brown are listed as songwriters, as is Taylor Johnson, who co-produced the new record with Dave Fridmann and Scott Booker (with further production by Jon Fridmann and Mike Fridmann). It emerges as a psych-pop ballad with echoes of The Soft Bulletin, especially where soaring strings meet a fuzzed-out lead guitar.
Coyne offered this explanation, describing how the lyrics drew from a nighttime excursion with his young sons beneath the moon’s glow:
“God Will Control the Werewolves” began as a small tale about my two boys (Bloom and Rex) and me playing hide-and-seek at the park as dusk settled in.
We had all become unusually aware of the moon’s cycles after a month spent at an ocean-view Airbnb. The full moon drained water from a nearby cove, and we wandered a quarter-mile out over the seabed, spotting strange sea life clinging to the rocks… yet because of the moon, we had this incredible adventure that stayed fresh in our minds, and on this evening of hide-and-seek it happened to be another full moon… Bloom asked me whether, while he and Rex were hidden, the werewolves would reach them (they’d watched a few werewolf flicks and knew the full moon meant there’d be werewolves about), and I told him God would keep the werewolves at bay for a while as we played.”
The way the track formed in my head had a Pink Floyd Dark Side Of The Moon vibe—only with Syd Barrett still in the band… ha.
Coyne recently joined longtime collaborator Miley Cyrus onstage at the Hollywood Bowl. Yoshimi fans should note that the forthcoming album also features a song titled “Ego Tripping At The Gates Of Hell Part Two.” As you wait for that track, you can hear “God Will Control The Werewolves” below.
TRACKLIST:
01 “Throb”
02 “God Will Control The Werewolves”
03 “Titan”
04 “Every Teardrop Cried”
05 “Hooray”
06 “Instructions On How To Draw An Eyeball or How To Deal With A Loved One Who Is Addicted To Drugs”
07 “You See You In Me”
08 “You’ve Got Brain Damage”
09 “At The End Of The Day”
10 “The Trees Are Getting Their Leaves / Ceasefire In The City of Singing Flame”
11 “Ego Tripping At The Gates Of Hell Part Two”
12 “A Sunset Far Away”
13 “Now I Understand”
TOUR DATES:
01/22 – Nashville, TN – Brooklyn Bowl
01/23 – Nashville, TN – Brooklyn Bowl
01/26 – New York, NY – Irving Plaza
01/27 – New York, NY – Irving Plaza
02/23 – Los Angeles, CA – The Bellwether
02/24 – Los Angeles, CA – The Bellwether
02/27 – Chicago, IL – Metro
02/28 – Chicago, IL – Metro
04/02 – London, UK – O2 Shepherds Bush
04/03 – London, UK – O2 Shepherds Bush
The Teardrop Throbs is out 1/22 on Third Man. Pre-order it here.
