An Unrehearsed Riot

Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

After over three years, The Flaming Lips have finally released a new album, Embryonic.  Let me tell you something: this is weird music!  That’s a bit redundant I guess (it’s The Flaming Lips after all), but no matter, let’s get  reviewin’!  Bad first.

The “Bad:”  Yohsimi Battles the Pink Robots was smooth and synthy, At War with the Mystics was bright and popping, and Embyronic is…um…is…well it’s definitely pretty cool if you like The Flaming Lips.  There’s a TON of musical exploration going on in here, and most of it is discordant, noisy, atonal, and biting, even the slow stuff.  Basically, that means this is either the kind of thing you’ll love or hate.  There aren’t really any melodies to grab onto, no singing along, and not too many fun guitar passages that I’ll be able to recreate later.

The lyrics are typical Wayne-weirdness.  I haven’t really picked out anything profound or exciting, certainly not what I got from Yoshimi.  Wayne’s voice is echoey, spacey, hard-to-make-out-y.  As a fan of the shoegaze genre, I don’t mind this too much, but for people who like to sing along with albums, you may have problems with this album.  It’s a pity too, because Wayne has shown that he can sing nicely, so why did he almost completely hide his voice here?

Of course I don’t want to overemphasize the negatives.  These are small things, in my opinion, and are the kinds of things that some people will dislike and some won’t.  The one thing that I personally disliked about this album is the gritty, background noise which fills up a lot of songs.  I have nothing against atonal nastiness (Sonic Youth!), but please, if you’re gonna make something that’s deliberately difficult to listen to, at least polish it up.  There are a lot of whiny, buggy, tense noises that pervade the album’s background, and it doesn’t have the crispness that I personally feel it ought to.

The Good: OK, so the bad stuff is really not too bad – I’m just nitpicking for the sake of reviewing.  Let’s talk about why you should buy this album (and indeed you should).  If you like bass, then this album will be fun.  Sure, it’s all simple repetitive stuff, but it sounds really cool!  This is a deep, rumbling, menacing album, and there’s some great low-end sonic stuff going on here.  In general, lovers of the weird will enjoy this album.  It’s honestly hard for me for say a lot about this album.  It’s exciting and fun to hear.  I’d love to see it performed live.

Favorite Song(s): It’s a tie I think between “Evil” and “Silver Trembling Hands.”   The first song starts off with some really awesome scifi synth sounds.  Ring-mod?  I also really like the opening – “I wish I could go back in time.”   The other song is one of the more straight-forward songs on the album, with a nice, melodic chorus.

For those who read this in time, you can listen to the album for free on colbertnation.com, but I think it’s only for a limited time.  For the rest of you, the album will be available for purchase Oct. 13.  If you like The Flaming Lips, you’re in for a much-awaited treat.