It is a testament to the frenetic creative spirit of front man Wayne Coyne that yesterday, less than a week after releasing a new album, The Flaming Lips announced that they will cover Pink Floyd's seminal Dark Side of the Moon.
The announcement should come as no surprise to anyone listening to Embryonic, the band's 12th release, as the album often sounds like an attempt to mix their sound with some combination of Pink Floyd and Miles Davis.
Like any mixture, Embryonic features some very positive elements and some weaker parts. The album features an astounding level of energy, as it is essentially the result of jam sessions in band member Steven Drozd's garage. The songs that made the album have only been somewhat reshaped, but are, essentially, the same set that the band put together by themselves.
This lends to the unfortunately grainy recording quality that affects Coyne's voice at times throughout the album. The instruments, however, sound as crisp and harmonious as they have on any other Flaming Lips release.
Coyne has never been a musician who takes the well-traveled path, often choosing to blaze his own path for the sake of art. For this reason, it is not surprising that the Lips chose to release an 18-track double album in the age of the single, or that the album feels more like a stepping stone to some greater shift in the band's sound than a polished piece unto itself.
The astrological theme that seems to run throughout the album's track titles, for instance - Scorpio Sword, Aquarius Sabotage and Gemini Syringes - is a little more than the band's effort to tell similar-sounding songs apart from each other.
Karen O, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs lead singer and vocalist on the Where the Wild Things Are soundtrack, makes two appearances on the album, once on the culminating Watching the Planets and also on the bizarre I Can Be a Frog
where she makes as many animal noises as possible while Coyne sings over her.
The album is defined by this type of manic oddness, as there is undoubtedly some degree of quality to it, it just isn't as finished as it could be. In this instance, though, that may have been a conscious decision on the band's part, allowing its fans to hear the sounds of a band redefining its sound.
Adam Wagner is a sophomore studying journalism. Send him an e-mail at aw333507@ohiou.edu
