Always Testing Limits

Wayne Coyne, who has led the band Flaming Lips for 16 years, revels in gadgetry.

He’s overseen such experiments as musical pieces “played” by concert-goers operating boom boxes and a tour last year in which fans were offered the chance to hear the show in a special mix through Walkmans. The same offer will be part of the band’s show tonight at the El Rey Theatre.

He’s carrying with him books on Einstein’s theory of relativity and the science of clouds. And he filled Flaming Lips’ latest album, “The Soft Bulletin,” with such tales as “The Race for the Prize,” which depicts scientists competing to make discoveries.

For all that, he sure has trouble working a cell phone.

“I can’t even retrieve my messages,” he says. “I feel I’m going to press a button and hack into NASA or something.”

He may have a layman’s fascination with science, but, first and foremost, his field is art, a very inexact world.

“This isn’t medicine for kids with cancer,” says Coyne, 39. “You don’t really have to have a bold reason to pursue this eccentric art side of things. . . . Things we do are designed to be these grand experiments, and they don’t have to work. They just have to be. As opposed to science, where you don’t just throw things together because you like to see the explosion. But in music, you can.”

What’s surprising is that his offbeat experiments have been supported for the last decade by corporate Warner Bros. Records.

Flaming Lips, based in Coyne’s native Oklahoma, built a small but loyal following on independent labels in the late ‘80s and was signed to Warner Bros. in the early ‘90s.The Lips poked into pop consciousness briefly a few years later when the quirky, droll ditty “She Don’t Use Jelly” found a home on alternative-rock radio, and the album “Transmissions From the Satellite Heart” sold a moderate 233,000 copies. But the next album, 1995’s “Clouds Taste Metallic,” sold only 32,000 as the pop landscape changed dramatically and interest in such acts seemed to fade.

Nonetheless, Warner Bros. stuck with the group, and although “The Soft Bulletin” has had only slightly better sales than its predecessor (60,000 to date), a new tone emerged in the way the band was perceived, evidenced by glowing reviews and prominent spots on critics’ top 10 lists for 1999, including a No. 4 finish in the Village Voice’s annual poll of the nation’s music critics.

Suddenly, the Lips and Coyne were being hailed as brave survivors, heroes who stuck by their alternative guns.

“It’s not out of bravery we stood here,” Coyne demurs. “We weren’t making these records that have come out now by design to be playing brave music in the face of the Backstreet Boys. I just try to entertain people like me.”

On one hand, Coyne believes the band’s position below the radar and its base outside media capitals helped it wait out changes in the pop world. But most important to the Lips’ standing are changes in his own mind-set, as reflected on “Bulletin” and its prologue, a limited edition set titled “Zaireeka,” which featured four CDs meant to be played simultaneously. Both collections are marked by an ornate, melancholy musical style that’s often been compared with that of Brian Wilson.

“For a long time people did avoid the idea of revealing themselves,” Coyne says, obviously having given the subject a lot of study.

“There was something inherent to punk or indie rock that said, ‘Who cares about the problems you’re having?’ That was stupid. The most powerful thing we have is our experiences, and if we could tap into that, that to me is what all great art does. It occurred to me slowly that I should be singing about my life as opposed to some fantasy world or things I wished had happened to me.

“Now that I’m older, I think the inner experiences became more important than the outer experiences. When we started, I was 22 and you wanted stuff coming in: gimme, gimme, gimme.

“You get toward 40 and you worry that outward experiences aren’t satisfying you and you haven’t had enough inner experiences. That’s the insanity every person goes through: being able to fit in their own head and wonder, ‘Is this enough?’

“That’s what not being young is all about. To some people, it’s great. To others, it’s tragic. And that’s why music can be so powerful. You can sit in your own mind listening to this stuff, and though you are really alone in your own mind, everyone else is too. This facing up to sadness in life, it’s powerful when you can do it with the right kind of music.”

BE THERE

Flaming Lips, with Looper, tonight at the El Rey Theatre, 5515 Wilshire Blvd., L.A. 8 p.m. Sold out. (323) 936-4790.