![]() Trippy, hallucinogenic rock isn’t usually lead by the bottom end, but here, it drives every song and provides a steady foundation so everything else can float around freely. ![]() And surprisingly, one of the most consistent, unifying features, is the bass work of Michael Ivins. ![]() These aren’t disconnected, individual songs, they’re chapters forming a larger narrative. 2, In the Morning of the Magicians and Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell all rolling out like continuations of the songs that preceded them. It’s a sound that fuels most of the album, with Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Pt. This song could work with just Coyne and an acoustic guitar, but the arrangements and deployment of the little flourishes give the sadness a dreamy sci-fi vibe that takes nothing away from the humans underneath the technology. It just feels like more because of Coyne’s unmistakeable voice and the bands knack for always knowing what weirdness they should throw on top, without ever smothering the solid song writing at its core. It’s pretty traditional song writing done really well. Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Pt 1 is a great showcase of what the Flaming Lips do best. It just feels like an easing in, a table setter, a story establisher, a world builder. Can’t, can you? ‘Yoshimi…’ sets yet another benchmark.From its faux live setting, to its sampled voiceover intro, to its hippy guitar sound, to its oscillations between a flanged out bassline from outer space and Wayne Coyne’s vulnerable struggles to reach certain notes, Flight Test is every bit the song a track one should be. ![]() ‘The Soft Bulletin’ may remain their ultimate masterpiece – in the way that it referenced every other record in the Lips‘ career – but try to name another band who have lasted ten albums, each one more visionary than the last. The Lips recorded this album (helmed by ‘…Bulletin”s producer Dave Fridmann) simultaneously with the scores for a friend’s fishing documentary and their own forthcoming Yuletide-themed venture into cinema Christmas On Mars. The notes he can’t hit are as expressive as those he can, making the corniest sentiments (the delight of sunlight, the vacuum primordial mysteriousness of existence, the unknowable of death) almost uncomfortably poignant.Īs Coyne’s hair grows greyer and more unruly, it seems, his creativity proliferates. Of course, this being the Lips, the bad guys can be vanquished with love, overcome with optimism, quieted with wonder, and beaten into submission with backing shrieks from The Boredoms’ Yoshimi.Ĭoyne’s rickety voice gives human warmth to a console glow of of keyboard whooshes and surges of electronica that venture out like astral projections, especially in ‘It’s Summertime’ and, yes, ‘Ego Tripping At The Gates of Hell’. In Coyne’s philosophical and quixotic worldview, humankind is at risk – this time not from disease (as in ‘…Bulletin”s ‘Race For The Prize’) but from evil robots (or whatever menace they metaphorically stand for) bent on total destruction. Though more understated, it boasts just as many moments of sublime pop glory – ‘Do You Realize?’ is upholstered with joyful Beach Boys harmonies while ‘In The Morning of The Magicians’ has an orchestral swell and fuzzy bassline weirdly reminiscent of Jimmy Webb’s immortal ‘Wichita Lineman’.Īs always, there is absurdity, playfulness, and childlike naivety, balanced out with musings on Big Issues (What is love? Is anything we believe in real?). If so, the confident and imaginative ‘Yoshimi…’ does a fine job of hiding it.Ī sideways step from the lush orchestration of ‘…Bulletin’, which seems positively baroque in comparison, ‘Yoshimi’ replaces that album’s symphonic wall-of-sound with skillfully textured electronics, samples and acoustic guitar. Surely, though, in the wake of their splendid last album ‘The Soft Bulletin’, over which every music critic on the planet wet themselves, they must have felt some pressure. They’ve never cared about capturing the zeitgeist or revisiting their early ’90s one-hit wonder commercial heyday – and that’s part of their inviolate beauty. Flaming Lips albums have always come like musical missives from the ‘Twilight Zone’, uniting Wayne Coyne’s starry-eyed magical realist story-telling with their quest to bend and redefine the very nature of the pop sound.
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