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Peer 2 Peer: The Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne and Nell Smith on Creating Their Nick Cave Covers Album

Coyne also hilariously recounts the time he told Coldplay that their unreleased song "Yellow" was "kinda boring"

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The Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne and Nell Smith

    Everyone loves an unlikely friendship. Wayne Coyne, frontman of The Flaming Lips, has been working for some time with newcomer Nell Smith, a singer-songwriter, vocalist, and longtime fan of the band. The two joined Consequence recently for an installment of our creator-to-creator interview series, Peer 2 Peer.

    The two know each other quite well, as Smith has been working with the rock group both in a mentor-mentee capacity, as well as on a project of Nick Cave covers. The final result, Where the Viaduct Looms, will arrive this Friday, November 26th.

    In this episode of Peer 2 Peer, the two chat about the origins of their creative partnership, their upcoming joint album, and navigating the recording process. Watch the video above; a transcription of their conversation follows.

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    Nell Smith: What’s up!

    Wayne Coyne: Here we are, I know! It’s weird to know that someone is listening and watching…

    Smith: Yeah, it’s kinda awkward, but it’s okay.

    Coyne: So — how do you feel about it now? I haven’t looked at what the reaction to “The Ship Song” has been, we’ve just been doing stuff and all that. But what’s your feeling?

    Smith: So I got a lot of positive feedback from it, I’ve heard lots and lots of people really like it, and I know that with the Bella Union thing, they’ve made a cassette and a digital release that you can buy on their website.

    Coyne: Perfect, yeah! Those seem like the things that we wanted to be like… we can put some of these things in place, and then we’d know we’ve got some cool stuff happening. I guess for me I thought it was gonna take a little bit longer.

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    Smith: Yeah, it’s just kinda been like… right after, we talked about it on a Zoom call, so we were thinking we could make a cassette and a couple weeks later we were like oh, this is your whole website! And there’s a cassette on there! And people can buy it, they can pre-order!

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