The Flaming Lips - 'Yoshimi Vs The Pink Robots' (Warner)
4/5
By: Toby L
Always originators amongst a continual scene of hapless copycats, The Flaming Lips are back with possibly their millionth studio-album to date - and the agenda, this time, is on following up past successes by taking a valiant leap into a new direction. And the results are extraordinary.
'Yoshimi Vs The Pink Robots' is a muddled, yet simultaneously coherent, body of recordings, whose theme throughout is on the perplexing subject-matter of a girl (Yoshimi) that battles evil machinery (yes, those 'Pink Robots'). Admittedly, when analysed so simply as this, you'd be forgiven for laughing or wondering if Flaming Lips frontman and general source of inspiration, Wayne Coyne, had finally and completely lost it.
Yet, aurally, the endeavours are exquisite. Ear-pleasing, yet challenging, 'Yoshimi...' marks an end to the Lips' gorgeous fixation with creating lullaby-standard symphonies as marked on their previous record, the scintillating 'The Soft Bulletin', and instead an escape into the DJ Shadow-esque noodling with drum-machines and synths (with the odd acoustic guitar here and there, if you're lucky).
Opening with the gloriously inviting 'Fight Test', whose melodic-splendour is only outclassed by its soaringly technical instrumentation, you soon find yourself swept on an unpredictable journey, spanning across the dark electronica of 'One More Robot' - which recalls the Super Furry Animals at their most brutally digital making sweet love with the disturbing Aphex Twin - and on to such peaks at the album's centrepiece, the highly percussive 'Morning Of The Magicians', Coyne's ever-charming high-pitched croon clearly finding a good home.
Any worries that the whole project isn't accessible enough are, reassuringly, cast aside when sampling the delightful chord-structures and bird sound-effects as demonstrated within the sublime 'It's Summertime', with its following 'Do You Realize', the group's current single, topping the dish off in fine order, boasting key-changes and choral singing-parts to die for. All this coupled with the uplifting experimentation of the 'OK Computer'-era Radiohead tones of 'Hypnotist', along with its intoxicating keyboards, and The Flaming Lips have unquestionably created yet another great musical-excursion.
So, gone are the lush 'n' plush string-arrangements - they crop up only very occasionally on here - and instead arrives the technology of the 21st Century, displaying bleeps 'n' beats alongside the Lips' customary and undeniable knack of producing romance and tunefulness... See - who says moving on can't still bear the hallmarks of what made such a gifted band so classic in the first place?
Artists in this article: The Flaming Lips
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