On Oct. 13th 2009 the Flaming Lips released their newest album Embryonic, which takes on the earlier sounds of the band, as they would have jammed in the early 90’s. It has had mixed reviews across the

Embryonic, The Flaming Lips, 2009

Convinced of the Hex is a veritable introduction to the album with a strange feeling to the song as a whole. There are a mixture of hollow noises, dark production, and perhaps overtly disturbing, to the point of creating a daunting quality to the song. In the Sparrow Looks Up at the Machine a lot of hints of Yo La Tengo are drenched in the instrumentation and vocalist approach, which provides a very striking reverberation of sounds. Evil begins to slow down and is quite melodic to the point of an almost the last half of Abbey Road on a lonely day experience. Still, the work is well built and soothing in its haunting environs.

The album moves forward for the Lips, while they returned somewhat to their roots, they’ve managed to explore new ventures, and experiment heavily. A few of the songs were done in collaboration with Karen O of the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs, as well as MGMT, and Thorsten Wormann.

It’s in The Ego’s Last Stand that the album really pulls together though. The heavy bass line with eerie vocals coming in after ten seconds of the beginning gives chills and does a great job of creating a frenzy of anticipation for the rest of the coming five minutes of song. The rest of the album proves the bands ability to remain solid in their work, though it becomes slower, and less enthralling overall. Perhaps the Lips were taking a calmer route in Embryonic and exploring themselves as artists as apposed to recent previous and more ambitious albums. Either way, this album is worth owning, listening to, and turning up the volume on. Though the probability of commercial success is unlikely, this album will definitely please most Flaming Lips fans, as we get to hear the development of them as a group, and all in all, they’ve never really strived toward stardom, but have managed to enjoy a bit of it curiously enough, thus proving that you can be creative and find the rewards agreeable, if not fulfilling. Their future projects will be of interest to many after listening to Embryonic, to say the least, as this would appear to be a developing effort for them.

By Favian Rodriguez