Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots

Album info • Wayne's notes • Lyrics • Album audio player • DVD info

Warner Bros. Records, 2002
9362-481412

01.	Fight Test Listen
02.	One More Robot
03.	Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots Pt. 1 Listen
04.	Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots Pt. 2
05.	In The Morning Of The Magicians Listen
06.	Ego Tripping At The Gates Of Hell
07.	Are You A Hypnotist??
08.	It's Summertime (Throbbing Orange Pallbearers)
09.	Do You Realize? Listen
10.	All We Have Is Now
11.	Approaching Pavonis Mons By Balloon (Utopia Planitia)

Some three years have passed since the release of The Soft Bulletin. With those years came a sackful of 'album of the year 1999' awards, live dates across the globe with constant demand for the band to keep coming back, and a scattering of TV slots here, there, and everywhere. Now, following a year spent flitting in and out of Dave Fridmann's Tarbox Road studio, the Flaming Lips have returned. This time around, the band have declared a desire to 'be less serious' with head Lip Wayne Coyne telling www.rollingstone.com in March 2002, "A lot of times we get into these things that are philosophical and heavy, but there was a little bit of relief when we could just say, 'Why does everything have to be death-oriented or existential?'" The album title itself, 'Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots', plants a big signpost towards a less weighty mood, yet this is no exercise in frivolity nor a return to the sometimes whimsical undercurrents of their mid-90s records.

Indeed, in contrast to the air of embattled sanity and desperate searching for hope that underpinned 'The Soft Bulletin', this record sees the band sounding sort of wistful, perhaps even yearning. Wayne is singing songs that seek to find the good in life, pondering the simple but fundamental things. He still flirts with the big themes - the meaning of love, turning regret and sadness into hope, wondering about right and wrong - but it's now one step removed, looking in on the weirdness and sometimes holding out a hand for those that haven't yet made it through their own times of turmoil. There are moments where the desires are heart-crushingly innocent while the contemplations simultaneously hint at a real knowingness with regard to life's mysteries. There's also a song about being saved from robots by a nice Japanese lady named Yoshimi.

As usual the lyrical evolution fits exactly with that of the music - where The Soft Bulletin was raw and sorrowful, 'Yoshimi' is gentle and warm, but no less grand and definitely more ambitious. Sonically, the album drives on from the envelope occupied by the Soft Bulletin, following the traceable musical trail the band have been following since they created Zaireeka. This time there is less prog-rock and there are many more hooks scattered through a bubbling stew of electronic and organic sounds. With yet another glorious Dave Fridmann production job, aided and abetted as ever by Lips bass-player Michael Ivins, those electronic aspects serve only to render a warmer feel to the record. It is also clear that multi-instrumentalist and arranger Steven Drozd has been working harder than ever to create the rich soundscapes splashed across the record, as the way the rhythms mesh with ever-beautiful melodies is astonishing at times. Both Steven's live drums and the programmed tracks seem to constantly pulsate and throb when they might previously have raged or exploded, and the record is constantly haunted by floating angelic voices and ghostly snatches of the noises of unknown electronic machinery.

Despite the storybook title, Wayne has made clear that this is not intended as a concept album. However, there are connections in some of the stories told through the record, as well as the continuing lyrical and sonic threads. The robot theme begins with 'One More Robot', which is the tale of a consciousness being born and the dawn of an emotional awareness leading to love. In terms of Wayne's narrative, that love is for Yoshimi, whom Robot 3000-21 must fight - the song is almost claustrophobic to begin with, as skittering rhythms and floating voices bubble behind the tale and a building melody, before breaking down into the lovelorn sound of the instrumental, 'Sympathy 3000-21'. The title track, 'Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots Pt.1' then begins with a syncopated, broken down acoustic guitar lick and a booming kick drum. The song tells the tale of Yoshimi battling the seemingly invincible Pink Robots, with jumping rhythms and jangling guitars knitted together by strange voices and rasping machine noises into some kind of indescribable pure pop. The chorus is almost ridiculously catchy, plaintively declaring, "Oh Yoshimi, they don't believe me, but you won't let those robots defeat me." The song then breaks down into what the band dubbed 'transcendentalist rock' with 'Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots Pt 2' - described by Wayne as the soundtrack for our heroine fighting the robots and winning...

From here on in, the album veers past a variety of strange delights and over ever more baffling pop heights. There's a strange fragile and yearning beauty about the questioning of 'In The Morning Of The Magicians', with Wayne wondering, "What is love and what is hate? Why does it matter? Is to love just a waste?" over a forlorn sounding acoustic guitar melody. More strident movements, which feature a surging bass-guitar melody, heady voices, and an insectoid rhythm track, occasionally punctuated the song, and these somehow serve to build a palpable air of mystery. The rhythms and the mood then continue to build from here with 'Are You A Hypnotist?' being a particular highlight. A massive clattering drum rhythm and a throbbing bass sound underpin a delicate melody and an elusive vocal musing on the semantics of forgiveness and self-delusion. The gong makes a cameo here too, amidst myriad swirling horns and buzzings that lend the song a somehow mystical and awed air.

The vibes are subtly altered by the sad but loving sounds of 'It's Summertime' - Wayne's song of encouragement for bereaved friends - before peaking in the life-celebration of 'Do You Realize?' The first single from the album has an almost bouncy feel, creating yet another mutant pop song from jangling guitars, clanging bells, and swelling strings. Wayne encourages the grasping of life's amazing moments rather than the lament of its passing, asking, "Do you realize that everyone you know someday will die? And instead of saying all of your goodbyes, let them know you realize that life goes fast. It's hard to make the good things last." Before the record draws to a close, there is time for a strange story of a man who meets his future self. Yet another tale of discovery and opened eyes, we hear how the man discovers that he must live the current moment to the full, to gain what he can from life. As the title makes clear, for some of us, "All We Have Is Now," and this is a fitting final lyrical tale.

The record then triumphantly marches into the sunset on the strident instrumental tones of 'Approaching Pavonis Mons By Balloon - Utopia Planitia'. The golden sounding trumpets and eerie animal-like instrumental cries create the perfect closing statement, leaving the listener with a fitting sense that endings are merely beginnings. The elated tone fits perfectly with the knowledge that the Flaming Lips can feel proud to have succeeded again. Their latest adventure shows them, and leaves us, agog at the mysteries of the cosmos and delighting in the vitality of life, seeing the beauty in our surroundings. This band is dancing around the unknowable, and shrugging at the realisation that we're all quite small beings in a very, very large universe...

Album info • Wayne's notes • Lyrics • Album audio player • DVD info

Back to Albums index