Over the last twenty-five years, Oklahoma City prodigal sons The Flaming Lips have developed a completely symbiotic relationship with alternative rock music. They’ve had an uncanny ability to both adapt to whatever modern styles were being popularized and in turn, set trends themselves. The band’s breakthrough 2002 release Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, in particular, despite its major label, was still able to help define the “indie” sound that would overtake much of this last decade. This isn’t to pigeonhole the band into a genre; from sloppy Replacements-meets-Syd Barrett garage punk to the capital-“A” Alternative rock of the early ‘90s to the Brian Wilson-esque Soft Bulletin through the dream pop of the last decade, The Flaming Lips have a compelling, versatile and rewarding back catalogue. It is all the more impressive that at the peak of their popularity, the group has managed to practically sum up their entire career in their latest release, Embryonic, an enthralling, invigorating and even challenging work that immediately manifests itself among the band’s best music.
When the band first announced plans for a double-album, it only seemed to be a logical progression for a band undaunted by ambition. Using the studio as an instrument, spending thousands of dollars on confetti per live show and releasing a quadraphonic album meant to be played on four stereos at once are all fair game for the Flaming Lips, so the thought a double album seems almost pedestrian in comparison. That of course, still means that there’s a lot of space to fill over two discs, and the lukewarm reception to 2006’s whimsical At War With the Mystics, coupled with the frightening lucidity of their 2008 feature film, Christmas on Mars indicated that the Lips were bound to look backward to their youthful weirdness for inspiration for the new record. The prospects for a retrospective, off-kilter collection of new Flaming Lips music was thoroughly enticing, but it also immediately seemed difficult for a group who earned their pedigree through the great sonic disparities of their lengthy career to pull off a summarizing record that would play as a solid, cohesive whole.
Embryonic wisely takes cues from the Lips’ current high-watermark, the decade-old masterpiece The Soft Bulletin, weaving together an assortment of lyrical songs around various instrumental interludes, and deviating little from the Lips’ proclivity to add layers and layers of dense, rich sound. There are key differences in Embryonic’s approach in that the songs are less traditionally formed, the interludes are more numerous and less structured, and the sound is more often than not designed to assault rather than ease. On The Soft Bulletin, harp glissandos would add texture to a particularly calm passage, whereas on Embryonic, they rush in and rapidly build to an in-the-red assault of turbulent percussion, courtesy of the ever-impressive Kilph Scurlock, who arguably gives the best performance on the record.
Lyrically, the album isn’t too far removed from the ruminations on man’s nature and ideas of free will that have cropped up on the last couple of albums, but the statements are far darker, and they lack the immediate, sugarcoated optimism of songs like At War…’s “The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song.” Lyrical ideas often combat themselves within the album, just as apt at one person’s own indecisiveness on human nature. Frontman Wayne Coyne sings on slow-burner, “Evil,” “Those people are evil / And they’ll hurt you if they can / I never understand,” only to be countered by multi-instrumentalist Steven Drozd, who, after clearing his throat, sings on the calming “If,” “People are evil, it’s true / But on the other side / They can be gentle too / If they decide.” The concepts are simple, but charming and affecting, and the otherworldly rush of the music would render the normal incomprehensible musings associated with this sort of progressive rock to be useless and overwhelming.
The album plays out as one steady whole, with recurring musical and lyrical themes holding the diverse mass together. It ebbs and flows from massive, bombastic centerpieces, like “Worm Mountain” and “The Sparrow Looks Up at the Machine” to tempered interludes like “Sagittarius Silver Announcement” and the vocoder-laden “The Impulse,” which augment the album with welcome, subtle breaths. Embryonic is also an album full of highs. The disarmingly seductive rhythms of “Convinced of the Hex,” the dark, vibrant pulse of “Silver Trembling Hands” and the climactic chants of “Watching the Planets,” all rank with some of the Lips’ greatest songs. Additionally, “See the Leaves” with its violent groove and sepulchral coda is arguably the most menacing song the band has written since “Jesus Shootin’ Heroin.”
So, for the umpteenth time, the Flaming Lips have risen to meet and surpass the challenges they’ve devised for themselves. Here was a band with a canon of excellent albums, a few of which could easily hold their own among the best of the last twenty years. In fusing together nearly every one of their strengths, with Embryonic, they may very well have outdone themselves, and it’s difficult to imagine them being able to top this. And even in the somewhat unlikely situation that this is, as Coyne declares, “The ego’s last stand,” they’ll have gone out in a brilliant way most bands can only dream of.
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