The Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots

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• FLAMING LIPS THE YOSHIMI BATTLES THE PINK ROBOTS

Free Music Notes for Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots

Free Music Review: Yoshimi Battles.... And Wins
Hit: 5 Stars

But, I clenched and reached into my back pocket and shelled out the cash for it, with that little nagging voice in the back of my head just dumbfounded at my reckless spending. This had better live up to the mountains of praise heaped upon it, or I'm not going to be pleased....

The Flaming Lips are a ragtag group of fellows who hail from Oklahoma. Wayne Coyne, the group's mastermind, brought the Lips together in the early eighties along with his brother and a select group of musicians. At first, the group specialized in what was essentially noise, gaining a cult following among stoned College students the world over. But in the years since their formation, they've honed their sound, despite the departure of several members including Wayne's brother and a revolving door behind the drum kit. But the Flaming Lips trekked on, scoring a major label deal with Warner Brothers and even scored a hit in 1995 with a song titled She Don't Use Jelly. But despite mainstream success, the band continued their wild experimentation, progressing even further and further into the unexplored realms of rock music. The few fans they had garnered with their hit were soon alienated by the vastly experimental Zaireeka, a collection of four CDs, all with the same track listing, that were intended to be played together simultaneously on four separate record players. Understandably, it was a commercial bust but is still to this day a required experience for every audiophile dork on the planet Earth. The Flaming Lips followed Zaireeka up with a slightly more accessible album, 1999's The Soft Bulletin. Hailed by critics everywhere as the record of the year, The Soft Bulletin built on Zaireeka's almost orchestral magnificence, extending the group's repertoire to include synthesizers, heavily processed drum tracks, and digitally altered vocals.

Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots is The Flaming Lips latest release, an album in which the group took their previous works and both built on them while also going back and delving further into the many avenues of musical exploration. Others have hailed Yoshimi... as the record of the year, claiming it to be an exhilarating and complex masterpiece that just begs to be listened to, enjoyed, experienced, and thoroughly dissected. Message boards everywhere were swamped with threads declaring the same thing. Is it all hype? Well, no, because it's not hype if it's warranted. For maybe the first time in a long while, the machine has been singing the praises of an album that actually deserves the acclaim that has been heaped upon it. Without flinching, I can say, right here and right now, that The Flaming Lips - an album from which I've never heard a single song from in the past - have produced the greatest rock album of 2002, and perhaps the greatest rock album in the last five years.

Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots is a very complex album, which is perhaps why it will never receive any sort of major mainstream attention. For sure, there will be people who don't like it; people who are trying to push the door open on the music when it is clearly labelled a `pull.' If you aren't prepared to give the album a chance, the possibility of garnering any enjoyment from it is, frankly, little to none. Upon first listen, Yoshimi is a very harsh record, cold and sterile in its approach. The guitar parts are few and far between, and there's definitely not an unaltered, straight drum track on the album. Whirring, clicking, and random blips are frequent, popping up at nearly every juncture. Yet, somehow, it works. It all fits together, almost seamlessly, leaving you breathless and wondering just how it can all piece together and stand as a cohesive unit. The blips, the processed drums and vocals, and the synthesizers combine to create a sort of unorthodox melody that, even though it probably shouldn't be logistically, is pleasing to the ear. Pieces abruptly shift in tempo mid-song, and the many synth effects are harsh and lifeless on their own; yet it still works. It's eerie; it's beautiful. It's just... It just is. Yoshimi... seems to have an almost otherworldly quality to it; a quality that is indescribable - it sits just on the edge of your mind, but you can't quite force it into words.

Wayne Coyne's voice is absolutely breathtaking in it's pure simplicity and level tone. It has an almost hypnotic quality to it that serves to mesmerize and draw the listener further into what is actually going on. You can almost feel the blips coming from behind you, and Coyne's breath on the back of your neck as he sings. My mouth had effectively dropped completely after the second listen. Still, there's another aspect to the album, is it's simplicity. Not the actual music, but the lyrics. They tell such a childish and silly story that it gives much of the album a dreamlike quality to it that it wouldn't otherwise have. And the lyrics are so simplistic that it leaves the listener to wonder about some type of higher meaning. Is this really about a little girl fighting evil robots, or is it a lyrical parallel to something more meaningful: a man's fight for his life, good and innocence prevailing over evil, the little guy versus the large corporations? It seems almost as if Coyne has left enough of a mystery to the lyrics that they can apply to pretty much whatever the listener might think they do.

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