Plumbiferous Media

Space-rock band The Flam­ing Lips released a new LP (its twelfth) on the 13th. The Flam­ing Lips has been active since 1983, and in that time has released eleven full-length albums, won three Gram­mys, and signed to Warner early in the 90s. In short, the band has quite a large wealth of expe­ri­ence, and more impor­tantly, it clearly shows in Embry­onic.

Wayne Coyne’s vocals on Embry­onic range between the highly-modified elec­tric crack­ling of the open­ing track “Con­vinced of the Hex” to the famil­iar ethe­real drift that has dis­tin­guished over twenty-five years of The Flam­ing Lips. Coyne’s voice is cal­cu­lated to keep the lis­tener on edge through the entirety of Embry­onic - and that it does, and well. Coyne’s voice is alter­nately woven intri­cately into the instru­men­tal field of the music and brought into sharp con­trast to pro­vide an addi­tional jagged edge. In cer­tain parts, such as the later sec­tion of “The Ego’s Last Stand,” Coyne’s voice is placed above the music, as an echo­ing cos­mic pres­ence. How­ever they’re used, the vocals through­out Embry­onic are top-notch.

The Flam­ing Lips have always been experts at their per­sonal brand of sur­re­al­ism, and the space-infused sto­ries through­out Embry­onic are no excep­tion. The images cre­ated by the words of Embry­onic are simul­ta­ne­ously per­plex­ing and enlight­en­ing, from the begin­ning of the album with “Con­vinced of the Hex,” which includes the thought-provoking “She says she thinks there’s some sys­tem / That con­trols and effects / I believe in noth­ing / And you’re con­vinced of the hex,” to the very end. One of few mis­steps is “I Can Be a Frog,” which con­sists mostly of Coyne singing “I can be a” [insert ani­mal name here] while Karen O. (of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs) makes ani­mal noises. For the most part, how­ever, Embry­onic is com­posed of exquis­ite exam­ples of the unearth­li­ness of The Flam­ing Lips.

The music of Embry­onic shifts con­stantly, even occa­sion­ally vio­lently, between calm tracks such as “Evil,” and active, often highly dis­torted tracks, includ­ing “The Spar­row Looks Up at the Machine.” Tracks like “Gem­ini Syringes,” which allows a solo bass to inter­act with a vocal mono­logue while sparsely incor­po­rat­ing a few addi­tional har­monies, are fol­lowed by those more sim­i­lar to “Your Bats,” which lets the drums run free even on a well-layered track to cre­ate a simul­ta­ne­ously fluid and highly active track. Per­haps more notable even than the sheer mass of diver­sity over the album, though, are the always impec­ca­ble tran­si­tions between themes, tracks, and moods. In the pre­vi­ous exam­ple of “Your Bats” and “Gem­ini Syringes,” “Your Bats” resets the sound by ini­tially sound­ing like what most resem­bles a band start­ing to warm up or prac­tice, and then mov­ing from that into a more fully devel­oped track.

Another, even more remark­able ele­ment, though more rare than, say, diver­sity, is the blur­ring of the line between vocals and instru­men­tals. The most notice­able appear­ances of this are on “The Spar­row Looks Up at the Machine” and “Scor­pio Sword.” On the first, the vocals begin to dis­solve into the rest of the music, to the point where they could eas­ily be con­fused with a syn­thetic part, and on the sec­ond a synth line begins to resem­ble vocals and even take on some­thing sim­i­lar to a vocal role on the track.

Through the 18 tracks of Embry­onic, The Flam­ing Lips main­tain an almost over­whelm­ing con­stant energy which grabs the atten­tion of lis­ten­ers, only releas­ing it 70 min­utes later. Between the trade­mark spaci­ness of Coyne’s vocals, the sur­real nature of the lyrics, and the col­or­ful elec­tronic hum of the instru­men­tals, Embry­onic never ceases to demon­strate the intense cre­ativ­ity of The Flam­ing Lips. Alto­gether, Embry­onic is a very good album, though it doesn’t quite match up to some of The Flam­ing Lips’ best work.

This post is tagged 80-89, The Flaming Lips