This summer I spent a couple of hours waiting in a tiny Oklahoma studio, where Flaming Lips’ lead singer Wayne Coyne was going to be stopping in to do some editing for the Lips’ newest project. One of my friends asked engineer Dan Pringle what we should expect. He thought for a second and replied, “He’ll be wearing brown pants.”
The Flaming Lips have never been the type to sit back, relax and do more of the same. With the group’s latest, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, the Lips continue the venture they began on 1999’s The Soft Bulletin with an allegorical sci-fi introspection.
The difference is that while Yoshimi is a kind of Orwellian “It’s a Wonderful Life,” urging the listener to value the moment, The Soft Bulletin tried to tell us that love and song were enough to make life worth living.
The sound on Yoshimi is decidedly more electronic than the band’s previous material. There are squawking synthesizers, sampled screaming and sequenced drums in addition to the orchestral grandiosity explored on The Soft Bulletin. The songs of Yoshimi are decidedly simpler in overall structure than its predecessor, but nonetheless work to great effect.
The premise behind the album is that a race of pink robots are trying to dominate the world, opposed by a karate-outfitted Yoshimi. The disc kicks off with the bouncy “Fight Test,” a kind of call-to-action where Coyne waxes poetic about when we should fight and when we should play the pacifist, singing, “I don’t know where the sunbeams end / and the starlight begins.”
The title track is more cheerful, quirky rock. The background is saturated with Japanese mumbling and karate “heys.” We hear all about the heroine’s discipline and skill in contrast to the evil robots’ devilry (buried in the background, one can hear a robotic voice vow, “I’ll get you, Yoshimi!”).
We’re also made aware of the heroine’s vitamin consumption. It’s a strange story, but what else could be expected from the band that’s producing an epic movie titled “First Christmas on Mars?”
“Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots pt.2” is a strange instrumental with a funky-sounding keyboard line and pounding drums. Cheering crowds and shrieking are clearly audible, and in the liner notes the track’s lyrics are listed as simply “screams.”
“Yoshimi 2” segues into a blissful keyboard line that melts in the listener’s ears like sweet chocolate and then becomes a delicate pop opus. In an ethereal voice Coyne asks, “What is love and what is hate / and why does it matter / Is love just a waste? / How can it matter?” These types of moments are abundant on Yoshimi.
That’s not to say the album doesn’t have its unabashed pop moments. The observations in its first single, “Do You Realize?” may be trite, but it’s nearly impossible to resist them: “Do you realize / the sun doesn’t go down / it’s just an illusion caused / by the world spinning round.” It’s hard not to listen to the track and feel yourself swelling with a warm, fuzzy sense of hope.
I finally did get to meet Coyne, and he is exactly as I had pictured him. He exudes a feeling of benevolence, and when he talks about his music, his eyes light up like a small child talking about his favorite things. It seems impossible to imagine anything but innovation coming from him. The Flaming Lips have never been the type to sit back and relax, and it shows.
