Psychedelic rockers the Flaming Lips are peerless originals in imminent danger of becoming the world's biggest Beatles/Pink Floyd derivatives. Then again, looking at the Lips' history, it's not as if they're very inclined to care much about that assumption. Obviously, a band whose MOST accessible album is called Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots--- which is an album that can be added to a discography sporting titles like In A Priest Driven Ambulance, The Day They Shot A Hole in the Jesus Egg, and Finally, the Punk Rockers Are Taking Acid (as well as a four-disc album made to be played simultaneously on four different CD players)--- isn't overtly concerned with commerical appeal.

After their first 'masterpiece,' The Soft Bulletin, the Lips were hard-pressed for a follow-up. The result, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, has been met with much of the same critical approval The Soft Bulletin yielded--- if not more. While the jury's still out on whether or not Yoshimi is just a wee bit overrated, this, safely, can be said: it's 2002's finest psychedelic concept album featuring a fantasy tale serving as a metaphor for society and mortality.

A palpable Beatles influence is all over this record. Yoshimi is all loopy psychedelia, McCartney melodicism, and Phil Spector-d up production. It's a big, grandiose, orchestral album, and, really, a gorgeous artistic statement. Overrated or not, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots is, in addition to being one of the year's most ambitious albums, one of the year's prettiest. Heavy-handed, if obvious, societal allegory--- the album might as well been called Rebellion Battles the Frigidization of Humanity, if only that could've been made into something half as fun as a diminutive Japanese anime character whooping it up over hordes of hoary machinery--- is the well from which the Pink Floyd comparisons are drawn... Animals, anybody?

But if nothing else, only the Flaming Lips would have the balls wax morose, depressing sentiments on mortality over a musical backdrop as heavenly as "Do You Realize??," Yoshimi's closest thing to a 'big single'. It's part of the beautiful--- if disheartening--- sucker-punch that closes out the album: "Do You Realize??" and "All We Have Is Now," whether soaked in majestic grandeur (the former) or lovely melodic subtlety (the latter), but put to wax a "live-for-the-moment" philosophy. "Do You Realize??" poses the question--- "do you realize/ that everyone you know someday will die/ and instead of saving all of your goodbyes/ let them know you realize that life goes fast/ it's hard to make the good times last." "All We Have Is Now," if glum, does attempt to provide some answers: "you and me were never meant to be part of the future/ all we have is now/ all we've ever had is now." (TECHNICALLY, the final song on Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots is "Approaching Pavonis Mons by Balloon (Utopia Planitia)," a rather pointless instrumental--- the 'lyrics' section lists this song as "(strange talking and screaming)"--- but it's so unnecessary that it doesn't justify being considered a "song.")

Yet, despite Yoshimi's much-lauded denoument, it's chock-full of gorgeous tunage. Vocalist/guitarist/ringleader Wayne Coyne's lyrics are philosophical without being overly intellectual ("I was waiting on a moment/ but the moment never came/ all the billion other moments/ were just slipping all away"), and, while he's not a virtuoso vocalist, he maintains a nice, appealing, level tone throughout. Whether debating the pros and cons in a 'fight or flight' situation in "Fight Test" or providing a thoroughly haunting indictment of a vile deceptor in "Are You a Hypnotist??," Coyne and the Lips construct fabulous pop song upon fabulous pop song. "One More Robot/Sympathy 3000-21" uses an oddly frenetic acoustic guitar as the main weapon in its instrumental arsenal (and it, like every other lush, ambitious tune, has a LOT going on). "Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell" vaguely recalls late-period Beach Boys. And I'm not sure what "In the Morning of the Magicians" sounds like, but I know it's the best song on Yoshimi. (It is, of course, rivaled by the title track's two-part saga, part 1 a plaintive cry for help--- "yoshimi, they don't believe me, but you won't let those robots defeat me"--- while the latter, an instrumental, is simply identified in the lyric sheet by "(screaming)".)

Lofty pretensions aside, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots is an exemplary allegory and an exercise in gorgeous, dreamy psychedelia. It's an ambitious, pretty concept album that provides as much uplift as it does philosophy.








Recommended: Yes