The 6th Best Album of 2009: the Flaming Lips - Embryonic

Like a lot of others, I'm sure, I never asked for a new Flaming Lips album in the year 2009. It wasn't that I thought they weren't capable of it, or that their last album was particularly bad. It was that I hadn't really thought about the Flaming Lips at all. And why should I have? I've seen their live show, I've heard from people who have seen it more than once that it's always the same, so why bother? They do what they do, and they do it well. They can sell "Do You Realize?" to Mastercard for commercials for the rest of their lives and tour and Wayne Coyne can make public appearances to remind everyone how wacky and eccentric he is and the world will just keep on turning.

But then they released Embryonic and--holy shit--it's really good. Good enough to make me start thinking about the Flaming Lips again--about their back catalog, their live show, their legacy--and more importantly, thinking about why I hadn't been thinking about them before. Like I said: it isn't as though they had slid into mediocrity; while I rarely listen to it, At War with the Mystics was a solid, if unspectacular, addition to the catalog and that was just one album removed from the critically-adored Yoshimi, which of course, was just one album removed from the even-more-critically-adored Soft Bulletin. Not to mention all the stuff they recorded when they were all raging junkies in the 90s.

Now,

I never listen to Yoshimi or Mystics. Yoshimi, i think, is little more than a Soft Bulletin rehash and I just don't need that much Flaming Lips in my life. All of this makes Embryonic all that much better for me. Because it sounds nothing like anything they've done before, but exactly like something that they should have done before. Initially you write it off as a throwback to their 90's stuff, until you realize just how much more complex and fully realized it is. And It's so far away from the technicolor glitter and confetti of their vaunted live show that I cannot imagine them touring behind it without overhauling the entire show. It's dark and complicated and thematically cohesive; it has all of the ambition and grandeur of the Soft Bulletin without any of the schmaltz. And it never sounds forced. Not even the track with MGMT.

It's rare for any band to take such a dramatic step forward, much less one as established as the Flaming Lips. At some point, expectations reach the point where any album that isn't a masterpiece gets written off as evidence that the band is slipping. The "dad rock" cries get louder every time Wilco releases an album that isn't another Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, which they never will, and maybe they were dad rock the whole time, right? But let's not go down that road. What i'm trying to say is that Embryonic's very existence is basically impossible. Bands who have put in 20+ years don't just decide to switch up their whole sound and make their masterpiece. But the Flaming Lips did it. Good for them. Sixth best album of 2009!