Between reworking NBC’s theme song, creating new Guitar Hero guitars and preparing for the physical release of their Christmas on Mars DVD, The Flaming Lips are quite the busy folks these days. But with talk that a new studio album is on the horizon, the Wayne Coyne led outfit will likely only get busier in the coming months.

Of course, news concerning The Flaming Lips’ long-awaited follow up to 2006’s At War with the Mystics is nothing new. The Lips have been at work on it since early July when the group first confirmed the effort, at the time describing it as “something like if John Lennon got together with Miles Davis and they discovered computers.” But today was the first time Coyne and Co. actually dropped some specifics relating to what will be the band’s twelfth full-length endeavor.

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, the Lips frontman revealed the band plan to hit the studio as soon as all that skeleton fun is over and hopes to record the album “relatively quickly, in time for a summer 2009 tour.” However, quick won’t mean a drop of the hat type of release… you know the kind we’ve been accustomed to of late? As of now the Flaming Lips plan to release the currently untitled album the old-fashioned route via Warner Bros. Records.

What’s more, the outfit won’t be following Radiohead’s lead in the creativity department either:

“As bands get older, they get into one groove, and that’s the way they sound for 20 years,” Coyne says. “We never really wanted to be like that. We just keep finding new things we want to explore. So we’ll just  go in there and experiment around.”

“Even Radiohead,” continues Coyne, “as much as I like their last three or four records, I feel as though there’s a coloring and a shade that they sound like, and which they’ll probably move through time sounding like. I wish, sometimes, that we were as focused and grounded and identified like they are … But we’re just dorks. We’re the Flaming Lips. We’re never going to be Radiohead.”

So to basically sum it up, expect your standard Flaming Lips unpredictable craziness both recorded and live in the near future. And when it comes to live, we’re assuming that will include a number of festival appearances during the summer of 2009 as well. Bonnaroo anyone?

Speaking of Christmas on Mars, which scheduled to hit music stores everywhere on November 11th, don’t forget to pick up your deluxe edition of the film. It apparently includes a few extra surprises.

Categories: News, Tour
Tags: Radiohead, The Flaming Lips