The Flaming Lips: Embryonic (Warner Brothers)
.jpg "The Flaming Lips: Embryonic (Warner Brothers)")
How would I describe the Flaming Lips? Front man Wayne Coyne is a cross betwixt Jesus and Doc Brown from Back To The Future. A haphazard hairy shaman leading us not into temptation, but delivering us from evil. Musically they're a heady mix somewhere between religion and science, as much studio as instrument, as much sky as earth.
Embryonic is another musical paradigm shift from the Lips, a steady transmogrification from noisy psyche rock to swooning technicolour pop to this, which references everything from Miles Davis' Bitches Brew to Can, Skip Spence, Acid Mothers Temple, ELO...
The lyrics are darker - part existential crisis, part bleak new age-ery, part satanism. The album's all about the nature, understanding and transgression of evil, about losing control, destroying the ego, about giving in to freedom and all that entails. “People are evil, it’s true but on the outside they can be gentle too, if they decide,” to quote “If”.
As Coyne said: “making this record, we did, on all levels, completely lose our way... we surrendered to every impulsive whim... almost every song we intended to do, initially, failed. And now we stand before you not knowing what we have done.”
Another mad little foetus, and given the title, there is a sketchy, half-formed quality to the record. The usual themes and imagery's here – the magic, the tragic, grim realism, childlike wonder, birth, enlightenment, mortality, religion, science, psychedelia, psychiatry, dementia...
Occasionally wonky and shambolic and weirder than recent output, as evidenced by Liliana Cavini's Night Porter providing inspiration for the first track, "Convinced Of The Hex". This sets out their stall. A krautrock marching band beat and woozy squelches, funked up whoops and hollers, that bass (it's such a four string led record) and most bizarrely of all Coyne's monochrome vocals.
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