It’s fascinating to listen to initially, but increasingly frustrating by the end of the record.īy the time I was through the first disc of this mammoth double album, I realized that the Flaming Lips never set out to write songs rather, the majority of tunes here are built on Krautrock-influenced jam sessions, mixing equal parts keyboards and heavily distorted guitar with what often sounds like a twenty-gun salute set to drums. ![]() Songs like “If,” “Scorpio Sword” and “Virgo Self-Esteem Broadcast” never aspire to be anything more than sound exercises, varying kaleidoscopes of noise that shift wildly from one pole to the next without really giving a damn where they end up. Tracks like “Aquarius Sabotage” and “Gemini Syringes” do little but bridge the gap between proper songs, going from furious neo-psychedelia to soft string arrangements in one or a bubbly bass line to, um, nothing really in the other. Coyne still hasn’t gotten over his penchant for penning opaque existentialist mumbo jumbo like “what does it mean / to dream what you dream / to believe what you’ve seen,” but in the context of this freak-out of a song, it fits right in.Īfter the typically Lip-sian ballad “Evil,” which sounds most like an outtake of At War With The Mystics or Yoshimi than many of the songs on here, things start to wander off into uncharted territory, and the whole concept of Embryonic is rewritten. “The Sparrow Looks Up At The Machine” is even trippier, an atmospheric jam session again highlighting some powerful drumming while the Lips vast array of synths and occasional effects paint a vibrant musical canvas. “Convinced of the Hex” is all sharp guitar jabs and a locomotive of a drum rhythm by workhorses Kliph Scurlock and Steve Drozd, framing Coyne’s purposely robotic lyrics. From the beginning it’s an enchanting reversal, a band that’s become moderately commercially successful over the past decade brandishing a seventy-minute middle finger to all who thought Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots was the extent of their oeuvre. Do you know another lead singer who performs in a giant plastic bubble that rolls along the crowd?Įmbryonic, however, takes all the conventions and songwriting chops they’ve perfected over their last few albums and throws them right down the garbage disposal. They’ve always had their oddball urges, most noticeably Zaireeka’s ill-advised “quadraphonic” experience, but with that came the kind of earnest songwriting and memorable musicianship that really made the Flaming Lips one of the truly unique bands of the last twenty-five or so years. ![]() For Coyne and company, Embryonic is a figurative rebirth (really, the cover art says it all) for the band that made their name on crafting quirky, psychedelic space-rock with a golden ear for pop hooks. It’s obvious from the moment that frontman Wayne Coyne’s voice monotonously intones “you think there’s some system / that controls and affects / I believe in nothing” at the beginning of Embryonic that this is a Flaming Lips record that really doesn’t believe in anything, at least nothing in the sense of the boundaries of popular rock music. Review Summary: The Flaming Lips say a lot without really saying anything at all.
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