It doesn't happen very often these days – a band spends years, maybe a decade or more, toiling in obscurity before it works out who it is and can get to business. A variety of factors (chance, indulgent record company employees, a small number of tastemaking sponsors) meant that The Flaming Lips got to do just that. As someone who only properly discovered them through The Soft Bulletin in 1999, I'm surprised how easily that record's heroic cosmic pop let me into their earlier music in a style I generally hate: Mudhoney-style sludge-rock. Maybe it's just their character shining through.

Anyway, here it is in Spotify form: The Word's Moderately Chronological Guide to the Flaming Lips. We hope you enjoy it.

Shine On Sweet Jesus and What A Wonderful World from In A Priest-Driven Ambulance (1990)
The early Lips in a nutshell: a wall of noise, but behind it there's something secret and melodic that would in time grow to become the band's trademark. Already they're doing non-ironic ironic covers – even in the depths of slackerdom's hey-whatever relativism, Wayne really meant it when he sang that it's a wonderful world. (Haters of his naive singing voice, skip this one). Spot the Disney sample in Can't Stop The Spring for evidence of where the band ultimately wanted to go – into their own real-world Fantasia.

Talking 'Bout The Smiling Deathporn Immortality Blues (Everyone Wants To Live Forever) and You Have To Be Joking (Autopsy Of The Devil's Brain) from Hit To Death In The Future Head (1992)
Now they're on a major label and gigantic titles are in, mostly concerning death, Jesus, the Devil, damnation and general psychedelia. Generation X is in full swing in the United States but the Lips cannot keep the joy out of their music, nor a shade of melancholy (see You Have To Be Joking) that's deeper than the jejune whingeing of their peers.

She Don't Use Jelly from Transmissions From The Satellite Heart (1993) – and Lightning Strikes The Postman from Clouds Taste Metallic (1995)
Years of toil, plus the Lips finally get an American hit with the oddball grunge-pop of She Don't Use Jelly. One-hit wonderdom threatens. But just around the corner...

Race For The Prize and The Gash from The Soft Bulletin (1999)
The grand peak of artistic achievement is attained, as the Lips' vision of ultra-widescreen, anthemic space-pop finally coalesces. This is genuinely heroic music, fine-tuned by the addition of multi-instrumentalist Steven Drozd. Drozd was in a dreadful state drugswise at the time – but it sure doesn't sound that way.

Do You Realize?? and Fight Test from Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots (2002)
Come on, you can't do a Lips playlist without the great empowering be-here-now song of the Noughties.

My Cosmic Autumn Rebellion from At War With The Mystic (2005)
There's always been a Tangerine Dream meets Orbital at the restaurant at the end of the universe element to their music. Let this stand for their many wandering instrumentals which thumb their noses at the prog-hating miseries.

Spongebob And Patrick Confront The Psychic Wall Of Energy from Spongbob Squarepants: The Movie Soundtrack (2004)
Something little-known to close with. Only the Lips could invest a kids' song about a mollusc and a sea-sponge with genuine emotional heft. But then again, Wayne Coyne worked for a decade in a fast-food joint and thought he'd never leave. In that respect, he and the staff of Mr Krab's Krusty Krab (home of the Krabby Patty) are brothers under the shell.