The Flaming Lips Announce Tour and Vinyl Release of “The Soft Bulletin Companion”

The Flaming Lips in concert in 2019.
The Flaming Lips in concert in 2019. Photo by RMV/Shutterstock (10404502ad)

The Flaming Lips will embark on a journey across North America in late 2021 and early 2022, the band announced on Monday. The group will tour in support of their critically acclaimed sixteenth studio album American Head, which was released late last year.

According to the announcement, the 2021 dates of the American Head Tour will kick off with September concerts in Ogden, Utah and Las Vegas, Nevada, accompanied by shows in Philadelphia, Brooklyn, and Boston, among other cities in November. The 2022 part of the tour will start in San Antonio in March and includes 21 concerts across the United States and Canada.

The tour will follow the band’s recent series of “Space Bubble Concerts” in Oklahoma City. These shows took place in March and saw both the band and the audience being placed in space bubbles in order to follow the social-distancing rules amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Alongside the news about the tour, The Flaming Lips also revealed that the double silver vinyl version of their 1999’s release The Soft Bulletin Companion is on the way. It will arrive as part of the Record Store Day in June, with only 16,000 copies being available. 

The Soft Bulletin Companion was originally distributed as a CD alongside the group’s ninth studio album The Soft Bulletin. It contained rarities like demos and B-sides from 1997’s Zaireeka.