Flaming Lips - Embryonic

Wayne Coyne is back with the Flaming Lips and ‘Embyonic,’ their newest material since the release of ‘At War with the Mystics’ in 2006, and this time he’s not only being joined by his friend weird, but dark and experimental are also hanging out on the new CD as well. ‘Embryonic’ is one of the most experimental Flaming Lips works ever, excluding ‘Zaireeka,’ but most people haven’t really ‘listened’ to that anyway.

‘Embryonic’ is truly what it must sound like to drip into insanity. It starts off with some strange blips and sounds from the song called ‘Convinced of the Hex.’ This song is quite trance inducing, as are some of the other songs on the album. ‘The Sparrow Looks Up at the Machine’ continues entrancing, and leads into an infinitely calmer song, ‘Evil.’ ‘Evil’ is as smooth as butter to start off but gets very dark instrumentally somewhere near the middle, but reverts to is original state soon after. All over the song are desires for time travel and understanding. ‘Evil’ leads into ‘Aquarius Sabotage’ (one of five zodiacally named songs on ‘Embryonic’) and ‘See the Leaves,’ two hard hitting, psychedelic rock songs that both taper off into eventual silence, foreshadowing ‘If,’ ‘Gemini Syringes’ and ‘Your Bats,’ which just chug along and drip so slowly and quietly, the equivalent of some new age, psychedelic folk songs. Eventually ‘Powerless’ starts up to end the first disc. ‘Powerless’ is as awesome a disc ender as ‘Convinced of the Hex’ was a start to the album. It maintains essentially the same backing instrumentals but slowly builds and gets louder, with more intense soloing over until it drops off into a strange whirring static.
‘The Ego’s Last Stand’ starts the second disc with a strange, dark, guitar that slowly builds with the bass, drums, keyboards and an eerie harmony fronted by Wayne Coyne’s extremely dark lyrics: “The only way out / Is to destroy all traces / Oh, destroy yourself / There's no way back / There's complete devastation.” ‘I Can Be a Frog’ is one of two songs featuring Karen O from the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s. Throughout the song Wayne Coyne is naming animals he “can be”, and Karen O is making animal sounds and laughing in the background. ‘Sagittarius Silver Announcement’ is another entrancing song which keeps a steady bass riff and a haunting moaning and counting along with some complimentary ‘other sounds’ (for lack of a better word, Lips fans will understand). ‘Sagittarius Silver Announcement’ leads into ‘Worm Mountain’ featuring MGMT. First thoughts upon listening to this song might be ‘Geezer Butler?’ or ‘awesome!’ or probably both. It’s a very intense song, and it is awesome to hear the boys from MGMT getting together with the Lips. The song ends with some keyboard type sounds to calm everyone down and fades out very quickly. ‘Scorpio Sword’ literally cuts through like a sword with its first few guitar notes and quickly turns strange. The song is seemingly devoid of any structure and sounds something like a monster attacking with a drum solo playing in the background. ‘The Impulse’ takes it down quite a few notches. The lyrics seem to be run through some sort of vocoder akin to ‘Daft Punk.’ ‘Silver Trembling Hands’ starts off with a lot of ‘Ah’ing and a really solid rhythm section. Similar to many songs off of ‘Embryonic’ it totally morphs into something different towards the end, but regains it’s intense bass and drums just in time to end. ‘Virgo Self-Esteem Broadcast’ consists mostly of ‘ah’ sounds, almost inaudible jungle sounds, and strange, sharp, bursts of sound. The jungle sounds keep going into the final song, ‘Watching the Planets,’ the other song featuring Karen O. The song builds up with lots of drums and Wayne and Karen singing together (Karen is mostly making sounds, but it counts). Lyrically the song ends the album perfectly with the line “finding that there ain’t no answer to find” and sums up the work pretty perfectly.