After touring for The Terror wrapped up in 2014, longtime member Kliph Scurlock was supposedly fired from the band because he called out Christina Fallin – musician, friend of Wayne Coyne, and daughter of Governor Mary Fallin of Oklahoma – for cultural appropriation after Christina wore a Native American headdress. Members Wayne Coyne and Steven Drozd report that the band fired him because they didn't work well together. Around all of this occurring, the band became affiliated with Miley Cyrus, who appeared on a track-by-track reinterpretation of the 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band by the Beatles called With a Little Help from My Fwends. The following year, they assisted her with recording Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz, and went on tour as her backing band in 2015 in support of the album.
Title
In two videos released in late 2016, frontman Wayne Coyne describes how he found the album title and some of the song titles and lyrics in a second-hand book, a Polish translation of Erskine Caldwell's Close to Home, titled Blisko domu. He and the band liked the words primarily due to their sound, rather than their meaning. In any event, the grammatical cases, genders and word order in the Polish phrase are erroneous: oczy is plural, and młody is masculine singular. The correct translation of "The Young Eyes" would be: Młode oczy. Unless, the author's intention was to say: Oczy młodych, which translates to "The Eyes of the Young ".
Reception
Oczy Mlody was released to positive to mixed reviews from critics. AllMusic's Heather Phares gave the album 3.5/5 stars and noted that "Though its title is Polish for "the eyes of the young," the Flaming Lips' state of mind on their Oczy Mlody album isn't exactly naive ", ultimately concluding that "Though happy ending feels a bit tacked-on compared to the rest of Oczy Mlody's trippy melancholy, its meaning is clear: finding hope isn't easy, but seen the right way, it can be an adventure." Clash Magazine gave the album a positive 8/10 score and noted that "Lyrically, ‘Oczy Mlody’ falls into quixotic non-sequiturs that will either have you nodding sagely or rolling your eyes, depending on your disposition, but that’s par for the course. They’ve managed to meld together the grand themes of ‘The Soft Bulletin’ and ‘Yoshimi…’ with some of the experimentation of ‘Embryonic’ and ‘The Terror’, and it makes for a fascinating return." In a highly positive review, Slant Magazine's Jonathan Wroble awarded the album 4.5/5 stars and praised it for being a "masterstroke of rhythm and tone that neither trips head-on into bliss nor spins into dismay". A more mixed review came from Rolling Stone, who gave the album 3/5 stars and noted that it's "decidedly more stripped back and puts a fresh gleam on the Lips’ usual pucker", but that "Aside from a lousy plot, Oczy Mlody‘s only other failing is it’s a slow build" and concluded that "The album is a bitter pill at first but it pays off to tune in and turn on". On Metacritic, the album has a 69/100 score based on 31 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
