It was an experiment in rock/pop that had been tried before, but never with the mythic and aesthetic conviction which characterized Radiohead’s Kid A or LCD Soundsystem’s debut. Sonically, the album belongs to a moment in alt music history which still, somehow, seems happily immune from aging: the late 90s and early 2000s, when adventurous groups were not just trying to co-mingle rock instruments and attitudes with synthesizers, but successfully doing it all the time. After all: “If you look inside / When you look inside, all you’ll see is a self-reflected inner sadness / Look outside / I know that you’ll recognize it’s summertime.” Wayne Coyne is concerned–up against suffering, death, and disease–with the liberation of the exterior moment. Or maybe it’s just that the sugary surface is so delectably detailed–and undergirded by such immediately pleasant melodies–that the surface is the depth in itself. Whichever album you finally prefer, there’s little question that Yoshimi is a major album that has depths to match its sugary surface. Somehow, and maybe through error, I’ve arrived at a certain impression of Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots and how it’s regarded.īasically, it goes: while Yoshimi is the mainstream breakthrough and accessible starter for The Flaming Lips, it’s actually The Soft Bulletin (or even some earlier record) that is the best–the deepest, the most detailed, the most rewarding of their discography.Īnd I guess I just want to suggest that, 15 years now having gone by, I wonder if we can consider that maybe… Yoshimi is excellent in both of these respects, rather than just the one?
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