![]() ![]() ![]() In the chorus, Coyne plays call-and-response with a malevolent synth burble that sounds like a malevolent R2-D2. "Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots (Part 1)" rides a simple melody and ridiculously infectious butt-beat as it sets the stage for the album's short-lived 'concept'- some entertaining nonsense about an army of Japanese girls training to take on the salmon-hued robots at a kung-fu compound right out of Enter the Dragon. It's a dizzying, disorienting sound- but once the novelty wears off, you've gotta admit it sounds a bit like Steely Dan. "Unit 3000-21 is warming/ Makes a humming sound when its circuits duplicate emotions," Coyne sings over a simple bass figure and ambient tones before the song explodes in a burst of overdriven clockwork. Yoshimi takes its first left turn with "One More Robot/Sympathy 3000-21," a slippery detour into glitch augmented with falsetto choruses, reverberating vocals and haywire surges of digital clickery. "If it's not now, then tell me when would be the time that you would stand up and be a man?" Coyne sings over a thick buzz of keyboards, bass and an almost hip-hop rhythm, offsetting his resolve in the refrain: "I don't know how a man decides what's right for his own life/ It's all a mystery." It's a stunning pop song- easily this album's "Waitin' for a Superman"- with an intensely memorable melody and the conflict of Coyne's internal dialogue resonating positively on many levels. The album gets off to a rollicking start with the winning "Fight Test," a glossy rumination on the call to duty- whether that's standing up to a playground bully or, as the Lips would have it, an army of rebellious androids bent on world domination. Nor does Yoshimi always put the Lips' best foot forward- though Dave Fridmann's production dazzles, the overdriven drums and orchestral swoons that characterized The Soft Bulletin are often lost in a busy mesh of programmed beats and lazy synthstrings. But it's also unfocused and top-heavy, a concept album about robots and karate that, somewhere along the line, strays into languorous, contemplative songs about mortality and death. ![]() Move over, Burt Bacharach: the spirit of classic songwriting appears to have found a new vessel.So let's just come right out and say it: after the one-two punch of Zaireeka and The Soft Bulletin, Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots is a bold and inventive work, brimming with ideas and sublime moments of brilliance. And "In The Morning of The Magicians" is a gentle, balladic rumination on love and empathy. "Do you realise?/ That happiness makes you cry?/ That everyone you know someday will die?" goes "Do You Realise", before a sparkling key change hikes the song up into a blub-inducing hymn to positivity. ![]() Elsewhere, we find some of The Flaming Lips most touching songs to date. Throughout, though, Wayne Coynes vocals are warm, honest, and heartfelt-no matter how absurd the words hes singing: "Shes gotta be strong to fight em/ So shes eaten lots of vitamins," he warbles, sweetly, on the title track, as vocoders chirrup in the background. The albums concept is peculiar in the extreme-a Manga-fied tale of a young Japanese girl warring against mechanical foes. Relying on crisp digital textures over muddy feedback rockouts, these eleven tracks are fully-realised modern symphonies, twinkling with vivid orchestral sounds. But Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots sees the band evolve even further into new, uncharted realms. 1999s The Soft Bulletin found this band of Oklahoma acidheads refining their eccentric indie-rock into glittering psychedelic fables. Good news: the 11th album from the Flaming Lips, is just as magnificent as its predecessor. Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots CD Warner Bros. ![]()
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