I guess I'm just going to have to face it, gone are the days when you could rely on the Flaming Lips to provide you with quirky, humorous pop songs. The forthcoming double album, Embryonic, may be the final nail in that coffin.
This latest expansion of the Oklahoma group's use of electronics and programming has sucked the life out of a band whose music had once been simultaneously catchy and elegant. In it's place we get unstructured clatter ("Worm Mountain", "Convinced of the Hex") with a healthy side dish of drone ("See the Leaves", "The Sparrow Looks Up At the Machine").
While there are a handful of intriguing experiments, like Karen O's animal noises on "I Can Be a Frog" and the slight World rhythm of "Scorpio Sword", these efforts generally disintegrate into seemingly interminable noodling. The alternative isn't much better though. "Powerless", for example, seems to be a half-thought out ambient track which sags into a spacey snoozer.
On the plus side, "Aquarius Sabotage" and "Gemini Syringes" both combine clatter with a glorious twinkle to decent effect. "Watching The Planets" and "Silver Trembling Hands" lean on more conventional song structures resulting in the most memorable rumblings of the discs.
Alas, after exploring Embryonic if fear it may be time to give up the Flaming Lips.
Best tracks: "Aquarius Sabotage", "Silver Trembling Hands"
Track listing for Embryonic:
- Convinced of the Hex
- The Sparrow Looks Up At the Machine
- Evil
- Aquarius Sabotage
- See the Leaves
- If
- Gemini Syringes
- Your Bats
- Powerless
- The Ego's Last Stand
- I Can Be A Frog
- Sagittarius Silver Announcement
- Worm Mountain
- Scorpio Sword
- The Impulse
- Silver Trembling Hands
- Virgo Self-Esteem Broadcast
- Watching the Planets
4.0/10
8 praise/complaints:
I completely disagree with you. Did you listen to it more than once?
I love this question because unwaveringly a fan of a band I have given a less than glowing review to will ask it and the answer is always the same:
"of course I have. Have you?"
Couple questions about this review, why do the electronics suck away the spirit of this band? Aren't they more than just elegant and catchy music, or is that it for Flaming Lips? And why is unstructured clatter a bad thing?
Good questions.
1. I found Flaming Lips to be at their best when the lyrics are front and centre, supported by strong melodies. For my taste, the electronics strip both of these elements from the music.
2. Personally, I listen to music for enjoyment. I find the unstructured clatter, while possible an artistic statement, extremely difficult to enjoy. That being said there are some artists who manage to pull it off (e.g. Tom Waits)
Basically, you're a fan of structured pop music, and while the past few Flaming Lips records have been more based around that, they as artists are not defined by such simplistic limitations. So I can see why you don't like the album in that regard, but maybe if you broadened your horizons a little you would see the excellent craftsmanship of this wonderfully bizarre piece of work and be able to appreciate their fearlessness.
Fearlessness and excellent craftsmenship don't in and of themselves make an album worth listening to more than a few times. There needs to be more to draw you back. It's the reason everybody still talks about an album like "OK Computer" but nobody really thinks about popping in "Kid A" anymore.
I've been enjoying the Flaming Lips' music for almost twenty years now so these comments aren't coming from someone unfamiliar or hostile to the band. Quite the contrary.
This review only proves that you have an inferior stereo.
Okay, you do have me there Joseph.
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