The Flaming Lips - Embryonic (2009)

The newest Flaming Lips album is noisy, catchy, adventurous, and often psychedelic, like most of their stuff but it lacks the warm feeling of previous albums created by Wayne Coyne’s endearing personality. For all intents and purposes, this might be their most “serious” album, in tone and mood. The bass dominates much of these tracks, being very high in the mix. The guitars, drums, and synths add flavor but don’t command as much attention as the chugging bass on songs like “The Sparrow Looks Up at the Machi” and “See the Leaves.” Even the synth based tracks, such as “Evil” and “Gemini Syringes” are dreary and tend to be heavy on the low end. MGMT guests on the noisy “Worm Mountain” but I wouldn’t have known (or cared) if I hadn’t read about it. Karen O (Yeah Yeah Yeahs) appears on several songs. Highlights are: “Convinced of the Hex,” “See the Leaves,” "I Can Be a Frog" and my personal favorite “Watching the Planets.” As engaging as these songs are, though, the album is just too long for anyone but the most devoted fans, and the gloom that engulfs nearly every song will be a turn off for a lot of people. Despite this, musically it is still very very good. The Flaming Lips are such a unique band, they can do whatever they want and not sound contrived and on Embryonic they sound very original, which is an illusion, because if you remove Wayne Coyne’s vocals (see the mostly instrumental tracks) they might sound like any old dream pop or psychedelic band. His voice lacks the relative friendliness I hear on some of their 90s and early 2000s material, contributing to the more serious sound of this album. However, very few things the band tries to do fail. They have a keen sense of what they can pull off, or maybe they can just pull off pretty much anything. They have such a distinct personality that they’re worth hearing if you even remotely like music, but all the things I appreciate about this band do not make me love them. Their music may not always speak to me too directly, but at the very least it is always very adventurous and a joy to hear when my mood demands it which is certainly not every day. LISTEN

Tracklist:

1. Convinced of the Hex 3:56
2. The Sparrow Looks Up at the Machine 4:14
3. Evil 5:38
4. Aquarius Sabotage 2:11
5. See the Leaves 4:24
6. If 2:05
7. Gemini Syringes 3:41
8. Your Bats 2:35
9. Powerless 6:57
10. The Ego's Last Stand 5:40
11. I Can Be a Frog 2:14
12. Sagittarius Silver Announcement 2:59
13. Worm Mountain 5:21
14. Scorpio Sword 2:02
15. The Impulse 4:06
16. Silver Trembling Hands 3:58
17. Virgo Self-Esteem Broadcast 3:45
18. Watching the Planets 5:16