A Review of The Flaming Lips new album, Embryonic

The Flaming Lips have always been weird; but unlike other artists who might fit that label, they have never been truly frightening. Frank Zappa’s nasal intonations may chill the blood, and the Dead Kennedys’ album art might actually merit a “Parental Advisory” sticker, but there was always something endearing about the Lips. Even the quasi-controversy of wearing Communist apparel to the Oklahoma state house rang false – dude, these guys fight pink robots!

With the release of the two-disk Embryonic, however, the Lips have begun to explore the darker side of their psycho-gum aesthetic. It is no accident that this album comes as the Lips begin to publicly explore the work of Pink Floyd, a group whose prog-rock albums balanced joyous ecstasies like “Any Color You Like” with foreboding ten-minute expositions – albeit with more of a focus on the jam that the full-fledged freakout that holds sway today (see: Animal Collective, Devandra Barnhart).

As with Pink Floyd, it is the bass that holds the album together, barely, dragging the opening tune “Convinced of the Hex” back to earth and a hummable melody. Frontman Wayne Coyne’s voice, in a departure from the sonorous tenor that haloed albums past, takes on a new menacing tone, almost a growl, proclaiming that “he believes” while she is convinced of the hex. She will convince him, in time.

Michael Ivins’ base plays a similar role in “See the Leaves,” kicking off with a snarl and driving the freakout until the song crests at the 2:30 mark, fading into a melody that takes a page or two from Vivaldi’s “L’inverno” with its fraught soprano reverberations.

That old Lips theme of mystic elements juxtaposed with modern technology (cf. “The Wizard Turns On…” and “Approaching Pavonis Mons By Ballon,” among others) continues in Embryonic. Catullus’ sparrow looks up at the imposing machine (a wizard, perhaps?), and Karen O, lead singer of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and current indie superstar, imitates many wild things over a frozen melody in “I Can Be a Frog.” (As a song, though, “Frog” is indolent – it sounds like a backing track for a montage on a particularly kitschy Coyne biopic.)

Yet even beyond individual songs, the album as a whole is structured around five astrological interludes, with titles like “Scorpio Sword” and “Virgo Self-Esteem Broadcast.” The songs are shorter than some of the other jams, but taken collectively resemble nothing more than the organic baseline and ominous voice samples of Floyd’s “Meddle.”

In albums past, the Lips went back and forth between science fiction and medieval epics (proving along the way that the two are not mutually exclusive). There was the heroic, test-driven “Race for the Prize” in the Soft Bulletin, and then there was Yoshimi. Yet this album is unambiguous, closing with “Watching the Planets” (again, featuring Karen O). Against tribal feedback, Coyne delivers the equivalent of a manifesto:

I got no reason to lie.

I’m killing the ego tonight.

I got no secrets to hide.

The sun’s gonna rise and take your fears away.

You’ll find that there ain’t no answer to find.

Watching the planets align.

Burning the Bible tonight.

Watching the eagle fly.

The sun’s gonna rise.

It’s enough that one might imagine the Oklahoman transcending, fading into the animal spirits that Karen O summoned, leaving us with a small puff of sun-infused mist. Thankfully for us mortals, Coyne is still here – even if his spirit has gone somewhere truly, and frighteningly, strange.

But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it.”

–John 20:25

With a tip of the tricorne to David Lindsay

SCENE 1 – Doctor’s Office.

DR. TAITZ: The new king, he troubles me – something that strikes the mind uneasy.

PATIENT (wincing, grabbing his jaw): Aye, ‘tis something striking uneasy, though’t seems to me a little further south.

DR. TAITZ (ignoring PATIENT): Observe his visage – its darkened hues, the skin’s deception but a shade suppressed. Doth our Lord’s house any Moorish blood?

PATIENT: What? The moor king? Bah – her Majesty consorted. “Twas a political arrangement, yes, to thwart the House of Clinton. Still

TAITZ: A Moor? Which one?

PATIENT: Oh, something or other – King Barbarianga of Tukokonga. Do I strike thee as a geographer?

TAITZ: Something is rotten in the state of Yuess.

PATIENT (impatient): Something is rotten in my mouth. Remove it, I beseech thee!

SCENE 2 – Street Scene.

(A MADMAN, wearing rags and bearing a pewter cup, sit’s a distance from the crowd.)

MADMAN: He’s a deceiver! A fraud! Down with the king!

The crowd passes by, paying him no heed. A band of three SOLDIERS, an avant-garde, accost the man.

SOLDIER 1: What’s this? One of the Sons of Fawkes? A penny for your thoughts, brave man.

MADMAN (withdrawing his cup): Your king is no king at all, but a half-witted click-click masquerading his lineage.

SOLDIER 2: Fie – you mean to say he was masqued up, a lady proceeding. A mound of cake to hide his true disposition, like so?

(He grabs a clod of mud from the street and begins smearing it on the MADMAN’s face, who tries to resist but is held in place by SOLDIER 3. At a distance, DR. TAITZ emerges from the crowd, watching with concealed horror.)

MADMAN: Help! Help! The tribesman’s Janissaries fall upon me.

(The crowd laughs, mockingly, as the SOLDIERS push the MADMAN between themselves.)

SOLDIER 3: The king processes through these parts anon. Pray we don’t see you again.

(He shoves the MADMAN into the far wall, where he crumples. The soldiers depart, boisterously laughing amongst themselves. DR. TAITZ waits for them to depart, then goes to the MADMAN.)

TAITZ: Wipe thy face – remove the muck of usurpers’ cake. (She reaches into her purse.) Here, take these tokens – it is not much, but it is all I have brought to market.

(Rolling over, he brushes aside the money)

A beggar who takes no coins! Now indeed I have seen it all. For what, then, the cup?

MADMAN: I am not one of French ilk – a pox upon their house! – living on the toil of others. ‘Tis a cooling aid, that hath put my troubled mind at much easy.  An old apothecary, Dr. Leary, provides it at no charge. Have a draught.

TAITZ (sipping). Absent city muck, ’tis most delectable. I greet thee -  I am Dr. Taitz, a dentist of these parts, and (looking around) skeptic of His Majesty.

MADMAN (dryly): Speak of the devil.

(A royal procession comes through. The crowd cheers and trumpets blare. At the end of the procession is KING BARACK, riding a steed and accompanied by several fully armored knights.)

MADMAN: His countenance, behold it! Smugly sneering in serpentine splendor, sending titmice scurrying in terror. He rules not with strong force, but black magick – the worst of the House of Washington.

TAITZ: And on what authority declare you him of regal blood?

MADMAN (startled): Why-

TAITZ: For suppose him to a pretender be, a Perkin cloaked in Southern sheen?

MADMAN: Milady of Virtuous Platonism blessed, fealty do I, Philip Berg, swear to thee. Such wisdom, such grace!

TAITZ: Nothing more of this – keep your stoop, and cock your ears to those in similar malcontent. To the genealogist I go – the seal’s the thing wherein we’ll catch the lineage of the king.

(Exeunt)

(A dark room, lighted only by candles. Cloaked figures sit around in a semi-circle facing the audience. TAITZ enters stage left.)

TAITZ: BERG, ‘tis a strange location for an uprising. Had the Cavaliers such dreary haunts?

BERG: Necessity doles out only her lowest rents.

TAITZ: And who are these Calthusians (gesturing at the cloaked men)?

BERG: The sentiment against the Pretender grows; these men form the core of our resistance.

(Moving to the first, removing his hood.)

BERG: Here, Satrap Keyes, long a warrior against the imposter king, having fought against his advances in the Central Plains.

TAITZ (aside ): A Moor?

BERG (aside ): At least he admits it.

(Uncloaking the second)

Carl Swensson, Esq., who hath drawn legal documents from the Great Charter to try and convict His Impostorness in abstentia.

TAITZ: The first thing we do, let’s unleash the lawyers.

BERG (uncloaking the third): Ronald Polarik, former scribe of Westchester.

(uncloaking the fourth)

Andrew Martin, who claims knowledge that the King is a spy sent by Saladin himself.

TAITZ: A Mussleman? Ay, there’s been muscling involved, no doubt.

BERG (uncloaking the fifth): Jerome Corsi, a scholar from the University who hath studied his majesty for many years prior.

(uncloaking the sixth)

Leonardo DONOFRIO, a known gambler whom I found at the docks.

TAITZ (brow furrowed): A great gamble this is indeed – to attempt such overturning with so motley a crew.

BERG: This is not all – I have espied many members of Parliament openly raising questions, and former warriors, and many townsfolk who loved their comfort too much to risk their lives.

TAITZ: Well, gentlemen, I stand before – I am Dr. Taitz, who instructed Mr. Berg in his quest to find those who question the king’s lineage. What say you?

DONOFRIO: Playing a black card when red’s trump is highly suspect indeed.

MARTIN: Black card, hie! ‘Tis a card black than skin, yea – a card of the imposter Mohammed, death upon his name. Under cover he arrives, to deliver the isles to the hands of the Sultan.

POLARIK: Not from Arabia doth he come, but from the Isles of Ho-Wai-Ha – or so he doth claim. I, for one, doubt their veracity.

TAITZ: The isles or the ‘Bamas?

POLARIK: Both, by nature.

KEYES: Perhaps a Musslemen he may be; but he draws his charter from Prussia and Russia, to whose bloody chambers he doth rush us.

(Intermittent debate breaks out, with each member arguing for their own pet theory.)

CORSI (standing up ): Enough! Can’t you see this thing, this abomination, for what it really is? The King is not Turk nor Moor nor Ethiop, a mere lurker in oriental shadows. ‘He is not a German butcher nor a Cossack mercenary. No – it is worse than this. King Barack is not royal, but is not base either – for he is of no woman born. He is the Devil himself in human form.

(Horrified silence.)

This is not a fight of warring factions – unless, by factions, we mean the forces of God against the Hellspawn! All Man’s destiny and his strivings have come to this.

TAITZ: We must strike. Pledge an oath – (they all rise, draw out an assortment of arms). To our mothers!

ALL: To those of mothers’ born!

(Exeunt.)

SCENE 4

MESSENGER: King Barack, my liege – a plot stirs against you.

BARACK (obviously wearied by the news): Oh, pray tell, what now?

MESSENGER: A league of citizens claim that you are not rightfully king – that your lineage is false, cover for something dark. They hath taken to the town square.

BARACK: Ah, them – well (smiling at his vizier EMANUEL) consider it dealt with.

MESSENGER Yes, my liege.

SCENE 5 – (Night. TAITZ is sleeping when several loud raps are heard at the door. In her nightgown, she cracks open the door.)

TAITZ: Who knocks at this hour?

MESSENGER: An ally in thy cause – a questioner of the crown.

TAITZ: So it hath often been said – especially by his soldiers.

MESSENGER: Death to the king!

TAITZ (worried): Enough – you’ll draw the sheriff. You demonstrate your virtue well enough – enter.

MESSENGER: My time here is short – by coming I have already put thee at risk. Take this, and I shall be on my way. (He hands her a scroll, affixed with a seal.)

TAITZ: This is quite the early hour for mail delivery.

MESSENGER: This is quite the piece of mail. Enclosed is the lineage of the House of Washington – no Moor is to be found.

TAITZ: The Aleph of our alliance! The Constitution of our cause! (tearing open the scroll) But wait – to whom do I owe this favor?

MESSENGER: To reveal myself would put us both at risk of death. Already, a warrant awaits upon my head. Enough – I am gone.

SCENE 6 -

(Town scene. An upraised platform in center stage, where the TOWN CRIER stands. A crowd gathers)

SPECTATOR 1: What’s the day’s entertainment?

SPECTATOR 2: A conspiracy! They claim the king an imposter.

SPECTATOR 1: Openly?

SPECTATOR 2: No document’s perfect – not even the Charter.

TOWN-CRIER: Hear ye, hear ye! Before ye stand the Peeping–

TAITZ (hissing): Doubting!

TOWN-CRIER: The Doubting Thomas Society of the Isles.

TAITZ: Behold, ye! The King Barack, much praised and loved throughout this land, is in fact none other than The Devil Himself, an Imposter to the throne who hath counterfeit his lineage. We present a family history of the Kingdom, retrieved at risk of much peril and personal injury, proving beyond any doubt that King Barack is no king at all!

(She holds out the scroll triumphantly, and bystanders begin to peer closely at it.)

CHILD: What? That’s not the King’s seal – look, it’s a jester’s head!

(The crowd starts laughing.)

BYSTANDER: Yes, yes, and it says right here – “Non Veritas.” ‘Tis counterfeit.

(TAITZ angrily seizes back the document, and starts spluttering. Meanwhile, BERG emerges, hand on hilt.)

BERG: Scurrilous wench – I should have recognized thee from a mile off. Thou art a hidden spy, working for the King.

TAITZ: Thou beggarly rogue!

(The Doubters begin fighting amongst themselves – some of the crowd stays to watch, but most drift off laughing. Ensemble music plays as the curtain falls.)

By Evan Lisull

Supporters of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA – as in, “Mah fellow Americans, I have committed a grievous arra.”) quickly jumped on the news that the U.S. GDP contracted by a mere percentage point in the second quarter. The left-leaning Economic Policy Institute gushed, “The marked improvement in this quarter relative to last is largely due to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).”

Unfortunately for them, there is more to the story than meets the blinkered eye. Federal government spending increased 10.9 percent in the quarter – this is true. But the majority of that increase came from an increase in military spending, which ballooned upwards by 13.3 percent. Non-military spending – by and large, the goods paid for by ARRA– increased by 6 percent, contributing a mere 0.15 percentage points to overall growth.

Few economists debate the fact that government spending has the ability to increase nominal GDP (although they will wonder how much that really means). Those that oppose use of “stimulus” measures oppose its long-term effects and question its efficacy over other measures such as a cut in the payroll tax. But the world of economics does not care when it comes to what kind of government spending is used; to use Keynes’ famous example, money spent on “digging holes” has the same stimulating effect as money spent creating the Hoover Dam. (Perhaps this explains why stimulus advocates care little for how exactly the money is being spent.)

Yet honest economics and American politics have very little in common, and so we discover the progressive corollary to the Kenyesian model: all government spending in a recession provides a GDP boost, except military spending. For the Republicans, there is a different axiom: government spending is wasteful, except when it’s perfectly efficient defense spending.

Nowhere are these cognitive dissonances more apparent than in the fight over the F-22 fighter jets. A recent Senate amendment that proposed to spend $1.75 billion for seven new planes ran into only one problem – no one who matters wants it. The commander-in-chief doesn’t want it. The secretary of defense doesn’t want it. None of the fighting forces in Afghanistan or Iraq want it. Sen. John McCain, touted by conservatives as an expert on military issues during election season, doesn’t want it.

But Sens. Chambliss and Isakson want it. The Republic Senators from Georgia, where much of the F-22 production occurs, retorted in a joint press statement that production of the planes “is essential to both our national security as well as the many local economies and thousands of workers that would be devastated as a result of these cuts.” Improving the national infrastructure, and saving jobs? That sounds familiar.

The debate takes on a Bizarro World quality. Conservatives who opposed ARRA’s “wasteful spending” waste no time in stridently defending this important structural improvement, almost perfectly echoing the rhetoric of the big-spenders. Those on the Left who pooh-poohed concerns about waste as petty in a time of economic crisis, have suddenly discovered their inner government skeptic as they pick apart the proposal.

For those forty-three Democratic senators that voted for the stimulus but against the F-22s: if immediate government spending is so important, why does it matter what exactly the money is being spent on? Your own colleague Chris Dodd has pointed out that shutting down this production could cost “up to 95,000 direct and indirect jobs” – so shouldn’t the program be saved in the name of “jobs across America”?

As for those twenty-three Republican senators that voted against the stimulus but for the fighter jets: if government waste is such an issue, why is it so inconceivable that it could occur in the Defense Department? If we should fear burdening future generations with debt, shouldn’t we also cast a worried eye at the unmitigated rise of military spending? And if this really is about national security against our ally India (and not about jobs in Marietta), then shouldn’t Americans be willing to increase taxes to pay for it?

While Democrats, with all the keys of power, can afford such hypocrisy, Republicans, striving for relevance, cannot. Until the party can show that it isn’t as committed to expanding the national deficit as it was during the Bush years, its message of fiscal conservatism will ring false to all but the most uninformed of voters.

Evan Lisull, an undergraduate at the University of Arizona, is a weekly contributor to The DC Writeup. He also writes at the Desert Lamp and The Kosmopolitan.

By Evan Lisull

The 2008 presidential election may seem like ancient history, but it was less than a year ago that Tina Fey famously spoofed Sarah Palin, chirping the now-infamous, “I can see Russia from my house!” Before Trig was a household name, before the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman became as widely read as the Times or the Post, the formal complaints against Palin were rather staid: the governor simply doesn’t have enough foreign policy experience for her position.

We’ve just finished eight years under a former state governor who could see Mexico from his backyard – and look how that turned out.Partly due to this, the office that would have been Palin’s is now inhabited by former Senator Joe Biden, that experienced don of foreign policy. The difference is night and day, and as Andrew Sullivan has insinuated, between life and death. By electing the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations committee over the wonder from Wasila, America ensured herself a new hope in foreign policy – a new approach to the world that one would be tempted to call humble.

Or so one might think. Instead, Vice President Biden went off the reservation, excoriating Russia in an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Monday. While citing the need to avoid “embarrass[ing] an individual or a country when they’re dealing with significant loss of face,” the vice president proceeded to do exactly that, describing the Russian Empire as “clinging” to an unsustainable past in the wake of declining birth rates and a “withering economy.” As if the comments themselves weren’t enough, Biden had to make them while chumming it up with Georgian President Mikhail Saakhashvili, who may or may not have instigated a war with Russia last summer.

Biden’s record as a gaffe machine is long lasting – in fact, it is the second time that his mouth has triumphed over his brain. Just three months ago, Biden urged American’s to avoid using public transportation during the outbreak of the almost entirely nonfatal H1N1 virus.

The issue comes not from the statements themselves – although attacking Russia for holding onto past glory is rather rich, coming from the man from Scranton. Rather it is the fact that he is making such assertions as vice president of the United States. In making these statements in his official capacity as the second-highest ranking executive in the nation, in effect he speaks on behalf of the entire country. Yet Biden seems entirely unaware that he cannot ramble as if he were a Delaware state representative, that holding such a high-ranking position requires a modicum of restraint. He pronounces off-the-cuff theories with all the self-restraint of a drunk collegian studying abroad, describing in slurred pidgin exactly why the world is the way it is. Yet rather than being forgotten in the haze of Sunday’s hangover, the ramblings of the VP become a matter of public record, a primary source for observers of American foreign relations.

Sarah Palin Visiting Alaskan Troops in GermanyPopulists are, however, obsessed with straight talk; to use already dated vernacular, they value ‘keeping it real’ over realism. As the featured comment on the Journal’s page put it, “Who gave Joe Biden the truth serum? The only person I’m beginning to respect in the Obama administration is Biden, go figure.” But as Dave Chapelle illustrated on his popular sketch comedy show, keeping it real can often go horribly wrong. There are few places in which it can be worse than in foreign relations, in which even the misplacement of an article can lead to bloodshed.

This brings us back to Palin, who still dominates the headlines even as she flees from them as though they were style handbooks. Even as bad as Biden might be, the punditry cautions, Palin would have been far worse. Perhaps so – but then again, perhaps not. After all,McCain’s iciness towards Palin – both during and after the campaign – have illustrated that the love-fest was little more than a shotgun wedding of political expediency. Is it so unreasonable to suggest that McCain’s attitude toward the vice-presidency would be far more controlling that the current loose leash? If McCain and his staff didn’t trust Palin on the campaign trail, why would they trust her with foreign affairs, a field in which Sen. McCain revels? In all likelihood, a Vice-President Palin would wait idly, biding the time and preparing for the 2012 race (although an exception might be made for a visit to Berlusconi’s Italy).

Each vice presidential candidate had their Russia gaffe. Palin’s, had it been issued from the Vice President’s desk, would certainly make the country look stupid. But Biden’s comment, which was actually issued, makes America look downright bullying. While Sarah Palin might have been unqualified, Joe Biden has proven himself incompetent. The former should lead to skepticism, but the latter should lead to denunciation.Thus far, however, Vice President Biden has only been described as an “asset” by the White House spokesman. Perhaps Gibbs misheard the question as an economic one.

Given these options, America would be wise to return to the old tradition of the do-nothing vice presidency. It is a long and storied tradition of being that “most insignificant office,” and later compared unfavorably to a “bucketful of warm spit.” In recent years, however, the vice-presidency has risen to far more powerful heights, thanks in large part to the ceaseless scheming by Dick Cheney. Gene Healy has chronicled the cult of the presidency, but concurrently there has risen a cult of the vice-presidency. A vice-president that did nothing but wait for the president to die is simply unacceptable in the eyes of an impatient “don’t stand there, do something!” citizenry. At the very least, though, we might hope for a muzzle.

A version of this piece was published in The D.C. Writeup.