Categories : Miscellany, Music Reviews, Rock + Pop.
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Rating: 2 / 5 Reviewer: Nathan Atnikov |
As accidental rock stars go, The Flaming Lips are the gold standard. In a time when low record sales meant getting dropped by your label and scraping by on your own determination, The Lips were given chance after chance after chance – based only on the 1993 fluke hit ‘She Don’t Use Jelly.’ The band – and the people that poured money into them – were finally rewarded with 1999’s The Soft Bulletin, a surprise hit now considered a near classic. After that, the astonishing one-two punch of Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (2002) and At War With the Mystics (2006), two albums filled with joyous, weird, life-affirming space-rock. Frontman Wayne Coyne became an everyman rock star; his ditties became anthems. As 2009 comes to a close, consider Embryonic a corrective shot.
Embryonic is largely tuneless and joyless. It is mechanical and grating. Coyne dismisses playful lyrics for the defeatist and fatalistic. Too many songs (‘Gemini Syringes,’ ‘Powerless,’ just to name a few) wander around unchecked. It would serve as fine background music if not for the jarring squeals that punctuate nearly every song. The only thing that nears reprieve is closer ‘Watching the Planets’ – which cascades in a full 65 minutes after pressing play.
None of which is to say that this isn’t exactly the album The Flaming Lips wanted to make. This is a group of dedicated, visionary musicians, and there will likely be a niche group of their fans that hold Embryonic dear. But it’s hard to imagine any of these songs being the soundtrack to an exuberant, graying, accidental rock star, careening over his adoring fans in a plastic bubble.
