The Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots

Visionary and madcap, philosophers and clowns, dazed and confused, brave and stupid, pretty and ridiculous, cheap sci-fi and acid rock—few bands have explored the cultural landscape of rock esoterica as have the Flaming Lips (www.flaminglips.com).

Dipping heavily into the arty ambitions (and arty weirdness) of ‘Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,’ ‘Pet Sounds,’ ‘Quadrophenia,’ and Pink Floyd’s ‘Piper at the Gates of Dawn,’ the Lips have criss-crossed the fringes of the American imagination for most of the last two decades, a traveling psychedelic rock and roll worship circus, another roadside attraction alongside the lost highways of American culture.

2002 has been a big year for the Flaming Lips, with three releases this year, bookending the Lips’ nearly 20 year history. Where are they going? Their newly recorded ‘Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots’ was released by Warner Brothers in July. Where have they been? Rykodisc recently released a pair of double-CD retrospectives of the Lips’ years on Restless Records, ‘Finally, the Punk Rockers are Taking Acid’ and ‘The Day They Shot a Hole in the Jesus Egg.’

While the Rykodisc compilations are tough going for the uninitiated, ‘Yoshimi’—the band’s 10th album—is the most accessible album the Flaming Lips have ever recorded, and ranks among the band’s best. After years of death rock, acid-punk, psychedelic pop, and eccentric art-rock, on ‘Yoshimi,’ the Lips have adapted their avant rock concept to the electronica, using far simpler arrangements---analog synths, fat bass lines, and precise acoustic guitars—going for concentration instead of mass. The result is sort of Radiohead without the anti-humanism, an album that, despite its sillier thematic elements—battling against flesh-devouring pink robots and all—managers to be both remarkable engaging and oddly comforting in a world still smarting from highly-publicized death and violence.

But, to fully appreciated the Flaming Lips as the phenomenon of American culture they are, let’s step back a moment and look over the history of the band before we come back to a final assessment of where they are today.

A band that honed it chops playing the theme from the 60’s American television show “Batman” over and over again, the Flaming Lips were formed in 1983 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma by brothers Wayne and Mark Coyne, Michael Irvins was recruited to play bass, and the band then began what would become a Spinal Tap-esque succession of drummers. Early gigs included a local transvestite club. Settling with Richard English in time to release their green vinyl-only self-titled debut on their own Lovely Sorts of Death label in 1983.

With brother Mark leaving the get married, Wayne Coyne took complete control of the band, recording three more albums of freaky acid rock—1986’s ‘Hear It Is,’ 1987’s ‘Oh My Gawd!!!! . . .The Flaming Lips,’ and 1989’s ‘Telepathic Surgery’—before losing another drummer. The bands growing cult status led to a slot opening for equally demented art-punks the Butthole Surfers, as well as a friendship with concert promoter Jonathan Donahue (who himself would go on to become the leader of Mercury Rev as well as an occasional Lip).

With Nathan Roberts keeping the drum stool warm, the Lips released the outstanding ‘In a Priest Driven Ambulance’ in 1990, which created a national buzz strong enough to get the band signed by Warner Brothers in 1991, leading to the unspectacular debut for Warner, “Hit to Death in the Future Head,’ the following year. Roberts departed soon after the album’s release.

They then added guitarist Ronald Jones and drummer Steven Drozd for the recording of 1993’s ‘Transmissions from the Satellite Heart,’ which gave the band it first taste of mainstream success with uncharacteristic radio hit “She Don’t Use Jelly,” followed by appearances everywhere from Lollapalooza to MTV to a bizarre lip-sync gig on teen soap opera ‘Beverly Hills 90120,’ and a tour of America in a Ryder Truck. Their brush with pop music stardom, however, was brief. The relative lack of commercial success of the Lips’ follow-up, 1995’s ‘Clouds Taste Metallic,’ quickly returned the band to cult status.

The next few years were the most chaotic in the band’s history. In 1996, Jones left to find himself, and, apparently, succeeded (so much so he never returned to the band). Irvins was the victim of a freak auto accident involving a flying tire. Drozd nearly lost a hand due to a spider bite. Coyne’s latest musical effort—conducting an orchestra of forty automobiles, each with their tape decks playing special composed music—lead to speculation by fans that Coyne, who never seemed the sanest of persons, had finally lost it all together.

Rather than putting such speculation to rest, the Lips’ next release might have been offered as evidence of such a collapse. The sprawling, inscrutable ‘Zaireeka,’ released in 1997, was a four-disc set of long compositions designed to be played simultaneously on multiple CD players.

1999’s ‘The Soft Bulletin’ refined the sensory-overload experimentalism of ‘Zaireeka,’ condensing the long, mind-warping, free-form ambiance of the earlier album into shorter, lushly orchestrated, stratospheric pop songs.

While ‘Yoshimi’ may not be as impressive in its ambitions as other recent albums by the Flaming Lips, its ruthless (at least by Lips standards) economy, makes it probably the bands most consistent album overall, with a number of outstanding tracks like “Fight Test,” “Do You Realize??,” “One More Robot,” and “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots pt. 1,” “Ego Trippin’ at the Gates of Hell.”

The album suckers you in with the superficial sci-fi concept driving the early tracks—fighting killer robots with the fate of humanity in the balance—then there’s a subtle shift somewhere in the middle of the album (“In the Morning of Magicians”), the album morphs into something more profound, a musing on the nature of love, the nature of belief, the nature of life, and the nature of death.

‘Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots” is the latest in a series of challenging, daringly original albums from the Flaming Lips. Their last album, ‘The Soft Bulletin’ was hailed by critics as their definitive masterpiece, their Big Artistic Statement, when it was released. One album later, it may already be time to rethink which record should receive that honor.

Matt Parks (Oct 11, 2002)