Even at their goofiest, the Flaming Lips were so goddamned sad. The enduring memory of the band at their peak of visibility centers on their absurd, colorful live show: Wayne Coyne in a suit befitting a traveling salesman or a televangelist, surrounded by dancing furries and streams of confetti, dousing himself in blood and rolling across a field full of festival-goers in a giant plastic bubble. They seemed like living cartoons, and never more so than when singing what could be the plot of an anime. Yet more often than not, the Lips’ psychedelic circus was a way for Coyne to reckon with intensely heavy real-life experiences. It was true on 1999’s game-changing masterpiece The Soft Bulletin — on which Coyne memorably asked, “Will the fight for our sanity be the fight for our lives?” — and it remained true on that album’s hit follow-up.