The Flaming Lips - Embryonic
Label: Warners
Year: 2009
Duration: 77 minutes
Reviewer Rating
User Rating
Legend has it that when the bosses at Warner Bros in the US heard Fleetwood Mac's 1979 experimental double album 'Tusk' they saw their bonuses flying out the window. Thirty years later, the suits won't be getting anything at Christmas for this one either. While 'Tusk' is now widely acknowledged as a classic, 'Embryonic' will remain a love-it-or-hate-it experience - a waste of money or a reason to feel alive. Let your ears decide.
The verdict here is that it's self-indulgent, unfocussed and discordant, an art-rock misadventure that feels like a perverse desire by the band to confuse the people who fell for them from 'The Soft Bulletin' onwards.
The wacky-catchy dynamic that served so well over the past decade is dumped in favour of, well, messing and whatever the arguments about free expression, The Flaming Lips were writing better than this 20 years ago.
By all means gets this kind of stuff out of your systems, lads, but put it on your website as a free download when you do. You're capable of so much more, and punters deserve far better.
Others will feel exactly the opposite. More power to them.
Harry Guerin
