Originally posted by Gdrlv
I love Clouds Taste Metallic and Soft Bulletin, but I voted for Yoshimi. It's admittedly premature to do so, but this album just strikes me for some reason. It's just wonderful, amazing music. I've liked the Lips for quite a while, but have never loved 'em. This album is changing my mind. It's been on the stereo nonstop since I got it. I just think it's brilliant. May replace Yankee Hotel Foxtrot as the best album of the year for me thus far.

Originally posted by Yancey


Wow. I'm surprised how much you like it. Did you read my review? I guess you completely disagree with it (as do most people, I've been getting lots of hatemail).

Originally posted by Gdrlv


You're right...I do disagree with your review. I'm also surprised at how much I like the disc, but I knew I was gonna love it the moment "Fight Test" began. I actually think the electronics do add another layer to the Lips' sound. Surprisingly, it actually makes their music sound more human and emotional than they ever have before. You're right that the album is a bit death-obsessed, but I also loved the eels' Electro Shock Blues. The new Lips disc isn't nearly as bleak or dark regarding the subject of dying as that album is. Yoshimi is the sound of a band that is growing older and growing up and is comfortable with that fact. You can't really fault a band that's been around for 15 or so years for making music that's a little more mature than they did when they originated. Plus, I think their music is every bit the wonderful headtrip it's always been.

Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, the upcoming album from The Flaming Lips that's due July 16, sounds like the soundtrack to the best sci-fi movie never made. Singer Wayne Coyne's voice, which always seemed alien with its strange phrasings and piercing tones, soars over cinematic strings, heavily processed drums and soft acoustic guitars on this, their 10th album.

"It seemed like a nice combination of sounds that you hadn't necessarily heard a lot of," drummer Steven Drozd, who also played almost every instrument heard on Yoshimi, modestly declared of their newest approach. (Within the next week or so you'll be able to listen to the entire Flaming Lips' album, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, at Neumu. There will be a link off the home page.)

Yoshimi brings the Lips even further from their psychedelic-guitar-rock past than 1999's The Soft Bulletin. The album features very few guitar riffs, relying instead on spliced drum beats and hyperactive, effect-laden bass lines to create their trademark unsettling, melancholy mood.

The sudden death of a Japanese friend inspired the first song recorded for Yoshimi, the fragile "It's Summertime." "That was fresh in our minds [and] inspiration for Wayne," Drozd said. "To communicate feelings of how to get over something like that happening and try to put an optimistic twist to it."

The album's first single, "Do You Realize?," similarly contrasts the dour with the uplifting as the chorus asks, "Do you realize that everyone you know someday will die?" while a gorgeous backing arrangement of rapidly strummed guitars, phaser sounds and harmonizing vocals makes the idea sound almost sweet.

"He's laying out some cold hard facts to you, some depressing facts. But the end result is he's saying, 'Hey man, let's try to enjoy this thing while it's happening,' " Drozd explained. "Try to get some enjoyment out of life before the earth's rotation goes crazy and we end up flying around in outer space."

Back on earth, the band continues to work, when time permits, on a movie based on a concept by Coyne. Christmas on Mars, which they hope will be released around Christmas of 2003, tells the story of Mars colonization gone awry. "Try to imagine '2001' meets 'A Wonderful Life,' " said Drozd, who plays the lead character, an astronaut. "Wayne plays a Martian who turns into Santa Claus and, to make a long story short, saves the day."

Warner Bros. is funding the film, even though the cast and crew consist entirely of Lips' extended family of friends and relatives. "The notion of Warner Bros. giving a guy money to make his own movie, that's just a great concept," Drozd laughed.

While the band is eager to finish the film, they'll be taking a break to participate in the Unlimited Sunshine touring festival this summer with Modest Mouse, De La Soul and Cake. This fall they hope to tour on their own, although a recent phone call put the Lips' plans up in the air. "Beck wants to do some shows or a tour with us as his backing band," Drozd said. Although the Lips haven't yet decided if they will join him, Drozd feels optimistic. "The possibilities are pretty fascinating." — Yancey Strickler [Tuesday, July 2, 2002]

Flaming Lips multi-instrumentalist Steven Drozd pondered the mystery of the group's long-term relationship with Warner Bros. Records. "How is it that bands that sell a lot more records than we do get dropped on a regular basis?" Drozd asked during a recent interview.

Considering the Oklahoma band's penchant for the absurd along with the current state of the record industry, it's a good question. On the group's last record, 1999's The Soft Bulletin, and on their new disc, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, due July 16, the current lineup of Drozd, frontman Wayne Coyne, bassist Michael Ivins and producer/quasi-member/Mercury Rev main man Dave Fridmann constructs epic left-field rock tracks that would leave most major-label execs scratching their heads.

Yet the Flaming Lips have now resided on Warner Bros. for over 10 years. "They've just been wonderful," Drozd said. "What else could you ask for from a major label?"

Warner Bros. should be asking the same question of the Flaming Lips. Other than platinum sales, what more could you ask for from a band? With Transmissions From the Satellite Heart, the Lips turned out a surprising hit in "She Don't Use Jelly," and the following albums — the sublime, psychedelic guitar rock of Clouds Taste Metallic, the soon-to-be-re-released mayhem of the four-disc Zaireeka, the critically lauded The Soft Bulletin and the electronic-tinged Yoshimi — are some of the best albums the label has released during the past decade.

When the company has had second thoughts about the Lips (they haven't exactly broken any sales records), Coyne has done his best to assuage their fears. "Wayne's a great salesman. Who else in the world could convince Warner Brothers to release a four-CD set that's meant to be played at the same time on four different stereos?" Drozd rightly wondered. "Who else could pull that off?"

The swooning space-rock of Yoshimi was no hard sell, however ("They had no complaints at all," Drozd said). In a press release for the album, Coyne explained the album's intent. "[Yoshimi's] theme of sunshine funerals will render its listeners powerless to study or analyze it and enable them to sit back and — hopefully for a couple minutes at a time — just simply be... entertained," he wrote.

The conception of Yoshimi was directly influenced by two other projects that the band was simultaneously working on — the country soundtrack to a documentary about fishermen and the space-rock soundtrack to their own Christmas on Mars sci-fi flick. The acoustic and electronic elements then began to bleed into Yoshimi, prompting Coyne to liken it to "some genetically altered plant, it's alive and thriving, but disturbingly unnatural."

"We were getting excited about using electronic elements. Instead of just being fans of that music, trying to actually pull it into what we do with our music," Drozd said. "Once we started playing with the electronic beats and the loops and cutting up stuff, the acoustic guitar mixed in with that stuff seemed kind of fresh to us."

Starting with The Soft Bulletin, Drozd has evolved into the micromanager for Coyne's master plans. "I have a great idea for something but I can't actually see it through," he said. "I have some great chords and melodies and some ideas for a song, and I'll play it for Wayne and, ****, two days later he's got some great lyrics. He's the kind of guy that can get a picture in his head of what something's going to be like and see it through."

Next year the Flaming Lips will celebrate their 20th anniversary, although Drozd said Ivins and Coyne, who formed the group in 1983, are not too excited. "How did Michael put it? 'The last thing a band who's been around for 20 years wants to be reminded of is the fact that they've been around for 20 years.'" Drozd certainly doesn't foresee any grand ceremony. "I might get them a six-pack of beer." — Yancey Strickler [Monday, July 15, 2002]