Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots

Composed By:

Artist: The Flaming Lips, Producer: The Flaming Lips, Dave Fridmann, Scott Booker, Label: Warner Bros, Length: 47mins, Released: 2002

Review:

Transporting the listener to a world unlike our own, a world of fantastic mechanic monsters and mystical powers that transform the aural landscape around us, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots is an album that invites us into a magic journey that is portrayed vividly in the music and songs that fill the atmosphere.

The Flaming Lips album follows the widely acclaimed and critically praised album The Soft Bulletin that was released three years ago, that took a less experimental feel to the music in place of catchy melodic tunes and more accessible sound, but as well, a shift to a more serious and thoughtful occupation in content and lyrics.

Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots builds from the band’s previous album, but takes a step back into the more familiar arena for the band, the psychedelic, the album feels more like their earlier work and the sounds are much more vivid and lively for this.

The songs tell a series of stories that paint a dark and haunting picture, the lyrics concern themselves with deep melancholic ponderings about love, mortality and deception, as the album opens its first four tracks, following the journey of its title character Yoshimi and her battle. Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots takes the listener further into this in stories that occupy varying territories of thought on these matters, leaving noticeably disparaging views on the subject of love, namely lost love and the missed opportunity at love.

The Flaming Lips takes you into a world that is poignantly sad and lonely, with some moments that illuminate the sparse landscape, if only momentarily. Rich electronic sounds that cascade all around and tantalise the senses, it is an aural experience like none other that evokes an incredible feeling within, and that beckons you to listen on.

Rating: 8/10

The Getaway Plan: Other Voices, Other Rooms

Other Voices, Other Rooms, the 2008 debut album by Melbourne band The Getaway Plan is one that weaves these tales of heartbreak, about lose and immense sadness into its music, with an energy and dynamic that has made it an enjoyable listen many times over. It is an album that I listen to often.

The Getaway Plan takes the listener on a wild and exciting ride in many of its album’s songs, particularly Streetlight and Where The City Meets The Sea that evoke an intense mood from within us, and it brings out this lively quality that only a harmonious blend of lyric and music can do.

Songs in the album like A Lover’s Complaint and Transmission have done more than just provoke us to feel, they have aimed to really show the vibrancy of the band. At times they are slow and solemn but then they grow wild, loud and roaring. It builds this world that is exciting but sometimes sad, slow and emotional, then gritty, raw and booming.

Sleep Spindles, a song I am partial to in the album, is haunting but tantalizing, it has this sensational sound that blows you away the moment you hear it, it just reverberates around your body and feels amazing; it is like a full scale riot and marching band rolled into one. Sleep Spindles makes great use to varying sound qualities; it starts slow and then rips into this dynamic song that blasts out from below.

Shadows takes a likewise mood to Sleep Spindles, it is really dark and haunting, and the lyrics tell you about a world crumbling apart, about trying to outrun your shadows and not to get sucked in. Grim but moving, it is one that shows the moods that shapes this album, exposing these metaphoric alleyways full of life’s pain and agony, with melancholic melodies and sparse lyrics.

Other Voices, Other Rooms has much more to offer you than an emotional junkyard, it is a racy and enigmatic album too, and that shakes the very walls of your world and excites you. Songs like Streetlight and Transmission start out as slow songs and the music is a delicate and playful thing to listen to, but then it jumps and evolves into these instantly hard-hitting and thrusting tunes that are almost electric in sensation, a metamorphosis in our ears.

RATING: 7.4