'Yoshimi' the usual Lips masterful crafting

The Flaming Lips
Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
Warner Bros. Robert Christgau once wrote about the Flaming Lips in his Village Voice "Consumer Guide" that, "these guys are Not Joking. Ever. Which makes them hopelessly ridiculous." Though I don't plan to contend the validity of this comment, Christgau seems to miss the point. The Lips' lyrics are searching for answers to life's simple, yet all-consuming questions. To accomplish this they have to evaluate their tools: Wayne Coyne's quivering falsetto and their continuing development as a studio group. In order to avoid overdetermination, they stick to readily accessible lyrics. Though often quirky, their unadorned power is never undermined. Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots is the follow-up to 1999's masterpiece, The Soft Bulletin. Like that album, Yoshimi is completely a studio craft -- a fact which has taken away some of the energy in the Lips' live performances, but they seem hell-bent on making their statements through their studio albums. Yoshimi defeats all other Flaming Lips records in making grandiose statements. On "Do You Realize?" Coyne sings "do you realize / that we're floating in space / do you realize / that happiness makes you cry." The album is not a shocking departure from The Soft Bulletin's heavily orchestrated approach, but it does have more of an electronic presence to it. The music almost sounds wilting, like an electronic version of Van Morrison's Veedon Fleece. The thing that is shocking about this record is its ominous mood. Formerly, the Lips' music seemed careless and even a bit fickle. That can make Yoshimi seem like a stiff dose of reality. On "In the Morning of the Magicians," Coyne ponders and then recedes, "is to love just a waste why does it matter? / As the dawn began to break / I had to surrender the universe will have its way." As a final statement, the album ends abruptly just as screeching noise was turning into a discernable ambience. There is an immense aura of sadness on Yoshimi. However, it deals with death not as a premonition, but as an accepted cost for the joys of life.