This track shifts the album's theme perfectly - songwriting like this doesn't come along very often.ĭon't let the psycho title catch you off guard - this song is another ideosyncratic mix of funky and soulful rock - definitely not hellish. This is a song which rewards the patient, with a beautiful slow-moving theme. A catchy, soft little heartfelt number, 'In the Morning of the Magicians' settles the track into the rest of the album's themes: death, lost love and regret. The sound effects will have people reaching for the volume control, but this album gets easier on the ears from here on out, so grin and bear it. This final chapter in the Robots subplot, an instrumental, is thrilling, repetitive background music for Yoshimi's final climactic battle with the pink robots. It's a fun song, not not nearly as frenzied as Part 2. Some of her sound effects can be a tad hard on the ears). The third of four robot-related tracks, and the most fanciful, this track is heavily sound-sampled (some samples courtesy of Yoshimi P-We, member and frontwoman of the experimental Japanese noisegroup band OOIOO and member of The Boredoms. One more robot learns to be something more than a machine.'ĭefinitely one of the boppiest numbers on the album, but not without that involved sadness that permeates the record. When its circuits duplicate emotions - and a sense of coldness detachesĪs it tries to comfort your sadness. 'Unit three thousand twenty-one is warming, makes a humming sound. The robot subplot on this album barely covers four tracks, yet this second track manages to flesh out our invaders to some degree: 'Fight Test' segues perfectly into the second track, a slower, well-flowing number featuring some of the best, most emotionally-involving lyrics on the record.
An internal debate about the importance of defending yourself, the song features the best in multi-track recording: crowd noise, multiple layers of Wayne's vocals and the various instruments showpiece the mood of the record. I'm not familiar with the Cat Stevens song this apparently resembles (Google it for more info), but 'Fight Test' sets up the record perfectly. This kind of record is best listened to in a good mood, with the musical aura sort of sponging around you. The Flaming Lips methodically, carefully let you into their world on their own terms, forcing nothing on you. The vocals are mixed very low to the music in most songs, making this record ideal for active listening or background music. Wayne Coyne has no great reputation as a lyricist, but the lyrics here somehow keep the ambitious music grounded.Ĭoyne's voice is oddly complimentary to the mood of the music he sings with a genuine earnestness that gives the lyrics more weight than they would otherwise have. The lyrics are innocent, heartfelt and simple. There's a lot that's hard to put my finger on about this release with 'Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots', the focus is not on your eventual destination, but the journey. The album's lyrics are both mostly-uncreative and perfect. The songs are all completely cohesive - the album has an ebb and flow all its own, perfectly contrasting the floaty and the harsh, the far-off and the immediate. This is an album from the school of slow melodies with fast beats, and it shows. The songs on the album are densely-engineered and ethereal the guitars are often almost unrecognizable, and bloopy sound effects cut in at perfect times to accentuate the mellow feel of the record. This is the Lips record that broke into me where The Lips' previous record, The Soft Bulletin, merely knocked. I love and appreciate this album as the album that helped me fully appreciate mellow music. The music was a giant step sideways from my expectations - mellow, highly melodic and often dreamy and even slightly psychedelic - kind of a funkier, even lower-key Radiohead.Īfter a couple more listens, I began to appreciate this record as the musical equivalent of a nice bowl of tapioca (whipped cream and maraschino cherry optional) it ain't steak, but it's got a peculiarly substantial feel of its own.ĭozens of listens later I fully resonate with this album. The track titles also led me astray in their sheer strangeness: 'Ego Tripping At the Gates of Hell', 'Throbbing Orange Pallbearers', 'In The Morning of the Magicians'. Perhaps the box art threw me off, featuring bright colors, giant pink robots and copious Japanese writing, both on the album cover and the disc itself. Upon picking up this most recent record by the experimental sonic, former- noiserock group The Flaming Lips, I was expecting wackiness to the tune of The Aquabats.
The Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
Review Summary: Trippy Experimental Pop From a Trippy Experimental Group
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