The Flaming Lips: "Embryonic"
Music for fans of sugary melodies and verse-chorus-verse structure this is not. For their latest album, The Flaming Lips have taken a turn for the more sinister, abandoning the freaky pop songs of critically-lauded albums like Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots, and instead embracing the dark yet psychedelic experimentalism of seventies krautrock bands like Can.
This influence is especially evident on album-opener “Convinced of the Hex,” which consists of front-man Wayne Coyne’s cryptic lyrics over a bed of guitar feedback, synthesizer squawks, and pounding drums. The next track, “The Sparrow Looks Up At The Machine,” is an early high point, simultaneously lulling the listener with a woozy synth line and smooth singing and horrifying them with the rhythm section’s clatter and the overall sense of ennui conveyed. Fans of the Flaming Lips will be most comfortable with the song “Evil,” which is calmer than the previous two but still delightfully creepy. Things are then brought to a fever pitch with “Aquarius Sabotage,” or at least the first half of it (the second half having a cool underwater feeling). Since as Embryonic is a 29-track, 2 hour double album, I won’t go through the entire album song by song, but high points include “I Can Be A Frog” and “Watching The Planet,” which both feature Karen O from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs on freakout mode. Thankfully, the album is more even than some of Coyne and Co’s previous efforts, and even the worst tracks are fairly compelling at the least. The album’s flow and cohesion reeks of the era of heady concept albums in the early seventies, but manages to avoid some of the pretentiousness of that time.
For the first time, I really get the sense that the Flaming Lips know what they want. I no longer feel like every song is twice as long as it should be, as I did on previous albums, and the instrumentation sounds less meandering and more in-control than it had before. This is one of 2009’s must-haves for anyone who likes experimental music, or for anyone who wants something challenging but ultimately quite rewarding.
Overall score: 8.5/10
-Malcolm Barnes
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