Music by the Flaming Lips, ‘Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots’
The title track starts off with a lone acoustic guitar strumming in a loose, Jonathan Richman style, a warbling synthesizer chirping out a couple of random, faltering notes behind it. Faint, far away voices can be heard speaking what sounds like Japanese just as a fat, stomping drum beat comes crashing in, immediately rerouting the song’s assumed course. Like Aladdin entering the Raja’s palace only after his loud procession of musicians, jugglers and elephants, it is then that frail-voiced singer, Wayne Coyne, steps up to the mic to deliver his ballad of the city-funded, black belt, robot fighter.
Much like The Flaming Lips’ first hit, ‘She Don’t Use Jelly’, ‘Yoshimi’s’ charm lies in its goofy, unusual rhymes (“She’s taking lots of vitamins cause she knows that it’d be tragic if those evil robots win”), and the fact that there is really no need for such a song ever to exist and yet it seems to fill some void that was ’til now unnoticed. It’s a semi-funky, instantly catchy number, perfect for nerdy manga fans and/or parents looking to play something other than the two Frozen soundtracks when their kids are in the car.
Then there’s ‘One More Robot/Sympathy 3000-21’. It’s a mellow, melancholy song that expresses in five heartbreaking minutes what it has taken ‘Westworld’ three-and-counting seasons to get across.
If this were as good as the album got, I’d say go ahead and YouTube the first three or four songs and call it a day. But the other, non-robot tracks are some of the most purely-written songs of love and loss since Leonard Cohen dropped ‘Hallelujah’. (What?! Record reviews are all about hyperbole disguised as personal opinion!)
Although only two or three other songs will get you as amped as ‘Yoshimi’, the others possess a quality that inspires introspection and reflection, sadness and hope. Coyne’s wounded voice, Steven Drozd’s seemingly repetitious yet persuasive drumming, and Michael Ivins’ incredibly inventive use of synths as background sound effects and impressionistic soundscapes combine to create an album full of the same sort of excitement that their older, punkier albums had with the more intricate and psychedelic experimentation of their more recent records. Equal parts pessimism, existentialism and anime-inspired science fiction, with ‘Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots’, The Flaming Lips may have created the most honest and innocent album of their discography.
If this were as good as the album got, I’d say go ahead and YouTube the first three or four songs and call it a day. But the other, non-robot tracks are some of the most purely-written songs of love and loss since Leonard Cohen dropped ‘Hallelujah’. (What?! Record reviews are all about hyperbole disguised as personal opinion!)
Although only two or three other songs will get you as amped as ‘Yoshimi’, the others possess a quality that inspires introspection and reflection, sadness and hope. Coyne’s wounded voice, Steven Drozd’s seemingly repetitious yet persuasive drumming, and Michael Ivins’ incredibly inventive use of synths as background sound effects and impressionistic soundscapes combine to create an album full of the same sort of excitement that their older, punkier albums had with the more intricate and psychedelic experimentation of their more recent records. Equal parts pessimism, existentialism and anime-inspired science fiction, with ‘Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots’, The Flaming Lips may have created the most honest and innocent album of their discography.
Music review by Josh!