How many bands started out playing a transvestite bar in Oklahoma City, toured with the Butthole Surfers, and later appeared on Beverly Hills 90210? The Flaming Lips did all that for openers. Then they decided rock was boring, held a concert in a parking lot with 60 cars stereos acting as the PA, and made an album that required four CD players to listen to it. The Flaming Lips are one of a kind.

The Flaming Lips have established themselves as one of the most innovative musical groups of the past two decades by taking chances and changing their methods to match their evolving sensibilities. Now, after 16 years and 14 albums and EPs, the Lips have released their finest work to date: The Soft Bulletin. With crisply produced tracks rich in harmonics, introspective lyrics and a sense of depth that recalls Radiohead's The Bends, singer Wayne Coyne, bassist Michael Iveins, and drummer Steven Drozd have put together a vision more pop influenced and musically layered than any of their previous recordings.

The Soft Bulletin is tight and flows much better than previous Lips albums. Ivins says the focused format is a result of the band learning how to let a song develop on its own. "Earlier [in our career] when we tried to make songs, we would squish in everything and it would detract from what we were trying to do." Now, Ivins explains, the "songwriting is better. [We] reached a point where we don't say that something [their own music or other styles] sucks." The result is a more mature, complex set of songs that have landed The Soft Bulletin at the top of Rolling Stone Magazine's college radio chart, and have elicited "Album-of-the-Year" praise from many critics.

With production help from Scott Booker and Dave Fridmann, the Lips have also tapped into a new vein: classical music. Ivins explains: "We found that ideas like [the diversity of sounds in classical] were interesting. Lots of bands use strings in a limited way. They sit on an 'A,' that's like 'uh.' Listening to classical, the instruments come in and add to the soundscape. We said 'if we did that, [we'd be on to something.]"

Taken with these concepts, they originally intended The Soft Bulletin to be devoid of guitars. They weren't quite successful. "There's a couple parts," Ivins says. "We just tried to expand different ideas and put them into songs. We felt that we had gone as far we could with rock and roll." As the album proves, they blew out the stops and let their imagination run wild. But how did they get from the tranny bars to creative control land?

After releasing independently produced albums for almost 10 years, the band signed with Warner Brothers in 1992. The Flaming Lips (composed of Coyne, Ivins, Drodz, and Ronald Jones) released Hit to Death in the Future Head. While that album was no great departure from earlier works like Oh My Gawd! or In A Priest Driven Ambulance, it led to the Glam-infused Transmissions From the Satellite Heart. This album gave the band a surprise No. 1 hit: "She Don't Use Jelly."

With the popularity of the song came spots on 90210 and "The Jon Stewart Show." Yet instead of following the track to top-40 pseudo-glory, the Lips expanded their musical ambition, looking into some of the same crevices that Frank Zappa explored: experimental sounds, random lyrics, and a variety of arrangements. They remained in Oklahoma City and recorded Clouds Taste Metallic, a commercial bomb, but an album that many critics felt was their best to date.