Word: albums
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Opener “Convinced of the Hex” immediately grounds the album in totally foreign territory for Flaming Lips fans. Bass-heavy, rife with corrosive guitar licks and polyrhythmic percussion, the song features a spaced-out—and for the first time, restrained—vocal performance from Coyne. He’s still speaking his own half-cracked pseudo-religious language, but it’s obvious from the beginning that, for the first time in a long time, lyrics don’t matter very much to the Flaming Lips. The downright raucous...
...Embryonic,” for all its surprises, fits logically within the Lip’s ethic—its existence as a double album that insists on a total listening experience is anachronistic in the way the band is known for. Whether this plays to the strengths of the new material is up for debate—there are certainly moments that are lost in the continuum. It’s unclear whether those more sedate tracks like “Evil,” “If” and “Sagittarius Silver Announcement?...
...brought a cinematic—at times even an operatic—sensibility to its structure, emphasizing the individual track as an autonomous episode within a greater, looser narrative, “Embryonic” reverts the energy of the single track toward a teleology that is itself the album-whole. It’s dense, menacing, and groove-oriented in a way that reminds the listener of the Talking Heads’ “Remain in Light,” an album whose individual tracks tend to be lost, or at least less potent, outside the framework...
References of post-punk today aspire to fill a gaping hole left by the conformity of pop music with the spirit of erstwhile anarchy. “Concepts,” the first full-length album by Toronto-based new wave post-punk band Little Girls, aims to recreate this early-’80s recalcitrant feeling but falls short of succeeding. Pairing distinct, minor guitar riffs with scratchy and ethereal vocals, the duo—fronted by multi-instrumentalist Joel McIntyre of Pirate/Rock—brings to mind British post-punk staple Joy Division...
Without comprehensible lyrics, the entire album relies heavily on its musical originality to justify its artistic endeavor, taking a risk with highly artificial melodies and voice tracks. “Youth Tunes” initiates the record with a synthesizer and a staccato guitar rhythm, while an odd, indiscernible voice warbles in the background and the guitar strums become progressively more ravaging. “Imaginary Friends” insists on an innocent nostalgia with its lilting yet pressing “oh’s,” attempting to pass off its gibberish as distinguishable lyrics...