Flaming Lips Are Primed to Reignite
Double Album is a Showcase for Ideas in Various Stages Of Development
The Flaming Lips
Embryonic
Released on Oct 13, 2009
There has been considerable hubbub in the music media about the experimental nature of the Flaming Lips’ newest. Though it is certainly a departure from the hook-filled pop of the band’s last two LPs (and to a certain extent 1999’s masterpiece The Soft Bulletin), Embryonic never approaches the weirdness we’ve seen Coyne and Co. capable of in the past (see: Zaireeka). The band indeed embraces a less polished, darker sound and eschews traditional song structure for a charming try-anything approach that presents various sonic concepts at seemingly different stages of completion (hence the album’s title). Still, Embryonic’s warm core and familiar melodic conceits make it feel like, at the very least, the slightly creepy cousin of the Flaming Lips the public has come to recognize over the past decade.
Most immediately notable about Embryonic is a conspicuous lack of songs built for the traveling live spectacle that has turned the band into one of the most popular touring acts in America. Early highlight “Evil” would not sound out of place on The Soft Bulletin, but an absence of the drive of the Lips’ rhythm section likely keeps the track from being a potential live vehicle – if, at least, the current format of Flaming Lips concerts is to stay intact. Closer and single “Watching the Planets” comes closest to a typical Lips singalong, but like much of Embryonic features uncharacteristically dark lyrics and a crusty minor-key aesthetic that differentiates the song from past “hits” by the band.
The detour is not at all a bad thing, and working through darker, murkier terrain gives a new life to the band’s sound. Particularly notable is the addition to the recording band of longtime touring drummer Kliph Scurlock. The connection forged by Scurlock with bassist Michael Ivins over nearly a decade shows, and the drummer’s organic, often primal approach lends Embryonic a “live” quality that at times feels absent from the Lips’ other recent efforts. Check the moody jazz-odyssey-by-way-of-Zeppelin “Your Bats” and the chugging Krautrock of opener “Convinced of the Hex.”
Despite the multitude of rewarding moments the band’s musical output of the past decade has given us, even the shambolic At War With The Mystics left some listeners with the creeping suspicion that the Flaming Lips had come to a holding pattern of sorts. Successful formula discovered and perfected, the Fearless Freaks of old began to fall into predictable patterns. With Embryonic, the band challenges its now-massive audience to look beyond the Lips’ outsized stage persona. More importantly, that band demonstrates a fresh willingness to challenge itself while maintaining its fundamental identity, and creates in the process a wholly unexpected, thoroughly compelling template of ideas.
High Point
The change of direction, addition of Scurlock, and willingness to present ideas, fully formed or not, add up to the most refreshing Lips album in a decade.
Low Point
The double-album runtime and lack of “release points” can be exhausting for one listen.
Posted by Miguel Harvey on Nov 05, 2009 @ 6:30 am
