The Flaming Lips—Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots

The Flaming Lips—Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots

Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots—The 1990s were a transformative decade for the Flaming Lips. It began with their fourth album, In a Priest Driven Ambulance (1990)—feedback-laden yet radiant alt-rock in the vein of the Soft Boys—and ended with the idiosyncratic, career-defining, career-redefining The Soft Bulletin (1999). Clouds Taste Metallic (1995) was sci-fi lite; its weird-science lyrics came off like comic book storylines, simultaneously more grounded than the acid trips of their first six albums and yet still more difficult for its implications of more complex emotion. The quadruple-disc Zaireeka (1997) was largely ignored by the general populace for its difficult concept, but it was certainly the beginning of the Flaming Lips part two. The Soft Bulletin focused that experimentation into more conventional recordings to universal acclaim. The band entered the new millennium with a sound all their own.

Never an album-per-year band, the Flaming Lips spent the next two years crafting their follow-up. The Soft Bulletin was an all-encompassing record sonically, so expanding their sound was a tall task. The band further developed their metaphysical concepts and came up with Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, the titular character being named for Wayne Coyne's inspiration Yoshimi P-We, who performs the Japanese-language segments on the album. The wistfully impellent "Fight Test" quickly became infamous for its similarities to "Father and Son" by Cat Stevens (Yusuf Islam), both in melodic progression and general sentiment. While it is fatally derivative, "Fight Test" has enough in its favor to allow individual appreciation, from the summery ambiance reminiscent of XTC to the gentle weaving of the verses at its consummation. The catalyst for the potential conflict is only made clear by the line, "If I could, I would, but you're with him now it'd do no good." The song leads into the cold "One More Robot/Sympathy 3000‒21," an affecting play at emotional numbness.

The winning run continues with the saccharine innocence of "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Pt. 1," which highlights the only thing that was missing from The Soft Bulletin: a true standout, which they deliver here, the chords pure pop, the story genuine in its foibles. Coyne went so far as to record a Japanese version sung by himself for the single release, which is reported to be sung with less-than-perfect inflection. "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Pt. 2" introduces another item to the mix to less favorable effect: noise, which isn't pointless per se—it can be seen both as a representation of the battle between Yoshimi and the robots and a tribute to OOIOO—but it does lack nuance just as a piece of music. "In the Morning of the Magicians" is more or less pleasing, though unvaried across more than six minutes.

The abyssal, pathetic "Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell" continues the theme of bare, unrequited longing. "Are You a Hypnotist??" comes off like a chant from a desert planet. The cuckoo chords that open "It's Summertime" belie one of the Lips' simplest songs before they launch into the soaring, jangling "Do You Realize??" which became one of their most enduring songs, despite disarming the listener with the self-evident musing, "Do you realize/That everyone you know someday will die?" The final vocal piece, "All We Have Is Now," is an underrated, apocalyptic story of meeting one's self from the future only to hear that there is no future. The closing instrumental "Approaching Pavonis Mons by Balloon (Utopia Planitia)" is a successful (and in fact Grammy-winning) trip to the smallest volcano of Mars' Tharsis Montes (note that while the Flaming Lips are known for their fantastic ideas, aerobots actually are sent into outer space by balloon).

Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots is not every bit the equal of The Soft Bulletin. It shouldn't be held to that standard, though it's a respectable sequel in any case, but its songs are often too lethargic: a quality that has admittedly worked well for the band at times, but not when the songs are as slight as "It's Summertime." On the other hand, its best songs, which are tellingly assembled mostly at the front, arguably surpass the high points of Bulletin, proving the Lips masters of their own craft. Sometimes that makes all the difference in the world.