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.