Before they reinvented themselves as the world’s most awesome
prog-rock band on 1999’s The Soft Bulletin, the Flaming Lips
were a bunch of noise-loving kids from Oklahoma who made music that was
a perfect soundtrack to your late-night LSD trips. On their 12th album,
they return to their mind-wrecking roots. The soundscapes on
Embryonic are every bit as big and as glorious as they were on
The Soft Bulletin and its even proggier follow-up, Yoshimi
Battles the Pink Robots. But this time, songs are replaced by set
pieces, groovy tunes are swapped for aural explorations. It’s all very
wild, free-falling and trippy, but it isn’t very much fun. Some tracks
are fragments; others are six-plus minutes of instrumental howls and
screeches. Frontman Wayne Coyne’s presence on Embryonic is more
spiritual than fashioned: He guides the action like an impish phantom
who has a dozen ideas running through his head but little concept of
how to channel them into a singular vision. Cuts like “Convinced of the
Hex” and “Silver Trembling Hands” are indisputable mind-fucks, but
sometimes we just want to cuddle. — Michael
Gallucci
This article appears in Oct 14-20, 2009.
