The Flaming Lips: Embryonic
(Warner Bros, two CDs)
The Flaming Lips ... 'I would say that, in the course of making this record, we completely lost our way'
Has the music industry ever seemed madder than it did following Nirvana's rise to stardom? Wrongfooted by Nevermind's success, US major labels began a goldrush, desperately signing anything "alternative", regardless of how uncommercial it might be. They signed Tad: after all, who can't see the crossover potential of a 22-stone former butcher with an album called God's Balls? They fought over Kurt Cobain-endorsed singer-songwriter Daniel Johnston, despite his problems with mental illness.
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- The Flaming Lips
- Embryonic
- Warner Bros.
- 2009
And they signed frazzled Oklahoma psychedelicists the Flaming Lips. Initially it looked like more evidence of collective insanity – but, after nearly 20 years, multiple Grammys and a string of hit albums, it seems incredibly prescient. Furthermore, it's testament to frontman Wayne Coyne's legendary passion and garrulousness that he has managed to talk a major label into various bizarre schemes: quadruple-CD sets designed to be played simultaneously, gigs at which audiences were encouraged to wear headphones, ropey Christmas films.
But, perusing Coyne's press release for the Flaming Lips' 12th studio album, you wonder if his passion and garrulousness might not have gone too far. He keeps enthusing about Embryonic's many "free-form jams" – surely the most dispiriting phrase in rock aside from "and now, the Jools Holland Rhythm and Blues Orchestra". Embryonic is a double album, a format whose worth has been debated ever since the first fan listened to side four of Bob Dylan's Blonde On Blonde amid the mounting fear that, in several weeks' time, when the police finally kicked down the front door and discovered his emaciated corpse, Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands would still be playing. "They are almost always summed up as 'would have made a better single album if only the artist could have focused themselves, edited themselves, got down to work and trimmed the fat,'" notes Coyne, before once more brilliantly incentivising the public to part with their hard-earned. "I think all of this is possibly true of our latest creation, Embryonic. I would say that we, in the course of making this record, did, on all levels, completely lose our way." That sound you can hear in the background is your local record store frantically hiring crush barriers and extra security to deal with the inevitable stampede on Embryonic's release date.
Still, you couldn't accuse Coyne of dishonesty: Embryonic genuinely is hard work. Everything is buried beneath layers of distortion. The gloriously lush, enveloping arrangements of The Soft Bulletin or Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots have been largely boiled down to bass, percussion and the odd electronic effect. The "free-form jam" is, alas, much in evidence: on two tracks – Sparrow Looks Up at the Machine, and See the Leaves – melodic fragments that the band might ordinarily have strung together into coherent songs are instead strung out and endlessly repeated. There are several guest appearances by Thorsten Wörmann, instructor of mathematics at the University of Bonn and author of the crisply titled An Algorithm for Sums of Squares of Real Polynomials. Perhaps in a desperate attempt to counter Coyne's sales pitch, his record company have made more of another special guest, Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Karen O, although they neglect to mention her contributions largely consist of clicking her tongue (Gemini Syringes) and doing animal impersonations on someone's answering machine (I Can Be a Frog). At worst, it's impossible to stop yourself from checking the time-elapsed bar on your iPod with increasing desperation: how much longer is this going to go on?
However, you can't simply write off Embryonic as a failure. Occasionally, the shift in approach delivers something new. A collaboration with MGMT called Worm Mountain sounds more bruising and visceral than the Flaming Lips have in years. Evil, meanwhile, vaguely recalls The Soft Bulletin's Feeling Yourself Disintegrate, but with all that song's blissful ebullience drained away. What's left behind is a terrible, affecting sadness of the kind that the harrowing documentary The Fearless Freaks – with its revelations of drug addiction, mental illness and familial dysfunction – suggested might lurk at the heart of what the Flaming Lips do.
For all its flaws and failings, for all that you may never feel like listening to it again, it's hard not to be perversely glad Embryonic exists. In 2009, the music industry seems pretty barmy again, what with everyone denouncing everyone else over illegal downloading, but its madness is not the wild, doomed, artistic risk-taking sort of the post-Nirvana goldrush. Most bands and labels alike have expunged everything but the safe option. Whatever else it may be, Embryonic certainly isn't that.
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