Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell: Is it possible that, in the very moment that we most think we have isolated a kind of authentically painful and self-transcending unrequited love, that we are never more in thrall to what is in fact the least True, most Narcissistic script of our own psyche? And that this self-containment in misguided desire might constitute the archetypal form of damnation itself?.In the Morning of the Magicians: Are our tiny wills remotely anything when compared to the enormous force of Being itself? Is the universe riding off with you and, if it is, what is the appropriate affective response to this sort of an ordeal?.2: Are the cosmic ordeals of your life merely the fart noise side effect of untrustworthy corporate entities engaging in cross-dimensional battle? 1: In our longing for a non-automated existence, is it reasonable to place messianic hope in the martial spirituality of a Japanese black belt in avant singing ? Are you sure that this is not precisely what your excessive attachment to pop music is? One More Robot/Sympathy 3000-21: What does it mean to feel love authentically when we are aware of the extent to which so many of our other immediate nervous responses are the result of conditioning, cultural or otherwise?.Fight Test: Is dogmatic pacifism a complacent cop-out? Do we need to recuperate an appropriately delimited understanding of heroic violence?.In fact, they may well be the exemplary articulation of a kind of epistemological paranoia which characterized the post-Y2K moment (as registered and metabolized in the consciousness of a neo-hippie amongst the ruins of late capital). And while there’s a lot to celebrate both in James Murphy’s psychiatric detachment and Thom Yorke’s fixation upon the clouds and the smoke, I often get the sense that Wayne Coyne’s stubbornly buoyant determination to see through to the sun and stars and sky is somehow considered less serious.īut his lyrics are no less sophisticated for the more immediately reassuring tone which surrounds them. 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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