Pros: Proof that the Flaming Lips, like other bands, can be absolutely wretched
Cons: Rotten songs; distortion on everything; boring; pointless; complete waste of time
The Bottom Line: For the first time in 22 years, the Flaming Lips have produced an album that has absolutely no redeeming qualities. Avoid it like swine flu.
I pretty much wrote off the Flaming Lips after that terrible At War with the Mystics album. I've been following this band since 1987 and saw the group peak with Clouds Taste Metallic in 1995, earn mainstream respectability with The Soft Bulletin (1999) and then descend into supreme suckness with Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (2002) and At With the Mystics (2006).
So, when I read that Embryonic was released, I made up my mind to ignore it. However, the critics went nuts for it and hailed this album as a return to the band's more experimental days. Some have gone so far as to claim this sounds like it was produced by an actual band rather than something that is the product of relentless studio craft. Those critics are liars. Filthy, dirty, stinking liars. Hell, they might be deaf liars for all I know. Rather than a return to glory, this album can be viewed as the final (I hope) chapter in the band's "Trilogy of Suck" that started with that Yoshimi garbage (no, I don't count that soundtrack for that Christmas on Mars film as an album in the proper sense).
Think of this sprawling mess as the equivalent of the Clash's Sandinista!, but without any of the good parts. We've got a double album here that is simply an exercise in self indulgence by a band that sounds unfocussed, damn near out of ideas and in desparate need of some severe editing. Embryonic isn't quite as terrible as Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music, but it's damned close. Unless atonal jams, crawling and boring bits of psychedelic garbage and distortion thrown on everything from drums to chimes is your idea of a good time, pass this album by and grab yourself a copy of Oh My Gawd or Telepathic Surgery if you want to hear a band that's experimental and growing. Grab anything from In a Priest Driven Ambulance through Clouds Taste Metallic if you want to hear a band that has learned to harness its potential. The Flaming Lips on this one sound like a band that's desparately trying to shake off that "mainstream" label and produce something that will endear them to critics once again. That ploy seems to have worked.
The band, however, just sounds like a unit that's making a bunch of pointless noise for the sheer hell of it. The whole mess kicks off with "Convinced of the Hex," a plodding, boring little number that is packed with distorted drums, ridiculously distorted guitars and synthesizers that sounded like they were pulled out of a trash can somewhere instead of being allowed to rot in peace. All of the studio gimickry and layer upon layer of noise can't cover up the fact that the track is just a mid-tempo, boring thing that grooves on straight to nowhere. We get more of the "make noise and rock along at a mid-tempo" blueprint with the second song, "The Sparrow Looks up at the Machine." After hearing the first track on the album and then listening to about half of this one, I thought my disc was damaged in some way because the distortion is just so ridiculously placed. I cheated and dowloaded a couple of tracks to see if I got a defective disc. The disc isn't broken. The band is.
Uh-oh. Oh, and part of the way through "The Sparrow blah, blah, blah" (the titles really do stop mattering after awhile), the band cheekily throws in that interference you get when your cell phone is left too close to the stereo and someone sends you a text or calls. Yeah. There's some art there.
By the time the third track on this disc, "Evil," started, I had given up hope on this album entirely. We're back in The Soft Bulletin Territory and are treated to five minutes of boring, low tempo psychedelia. We get orchestration, weird distortion, the sound of waves crashing, the odd piano chord, more retro (i.e., junky) synths and some of the worst lyrics on the album ("Those people are eeeeeeeevil. I'll never understand"). Yes, Wayne Coyne throws in a line or two about wanting to go back in time and pretty much wanders aimlessly throughout the overly long track as the band members throw in random bits of garbage instrumentation to prove (apparently) how relevant they still are after all these years.
Another low point here is the fourth track, "Aquarius Sabotage," which serves as the musical equivalent of of a brick wall -- if you don't shut off the disc after that one, you are one dedicated fan. The thing starts off promising enough with a nasty bass lick and something akin to an up-tempo, then that all starts and we get (you guessed it) more orchestration and pointless, wandering synths. There's some heavily reverbed spoken word slop thrown in for good measure and then we're led into yet another alleged "rocker" with a bunch of lyrics that don't matter a whit (that would be "See the Leaves").
I'll only mention two more rotten songs on this awful album because, well, I've spent two much time on it. If you want a real exercise in torture, give "If" a listen. If the crawling, drug-addled tempo doesn't cause you to skip forward to the next song (don't bother -- "Gemini Syringes" is worthless, too) then Wayne Coyne's high-pitched mewling about evil will. Another loser of a song here is "I Can Be a Frog" in which Coyne sings she said "I can be a frog, I can be a bat, etc." and Karen O. mimics each animal. That goes on for about 2 minutes and could be used as something to torture confessions out of criminals.
That's about all I've got to say about this mess of an album. Unless the Lips decide to do something radical like hire back whiz-bang guitarist Ronald Jones, I figure this is the last Flaming Lips disc on which I'll waste any money. Don't believe the hype.
Track Listing1. Convinced Of The Hex2. The Sparrow Looks Up At The Machine3. Evil4. Aquarius Sabotage5. See The Leaves6. If7. Gemini Syringes8. Your B...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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