Contextually it must have sounded weird to hear a noisy punk group from Oklahoma end an album with a relatively straightforward cover of “What A Wonderful World” in 1990. But hindsight is a glorious thing, and so is the Flaming Lips’ final independently released record In A Priest Driven Ambulance. Blasts of noise rock like “Unconsciously Screaming” and “God Walks Among You Now” bump up against the genuinely affecting ballad exercises of “Five Stop Mother Superior Rain” and “There You Are.” It’s definitely the first time the band showed major signs of the transcendent sincerity that would dominate their tone in the 00s, but that joy wrapped in the scuzz of their early Butthole Surfers and Can-worshiping years adds up to a thrilling beginning of the Lips’ strange and beautiful future. 

– Alex Riggs