The Flaming Lips /// “See The Leaves” /// Embryonic
Finally The Punk Rockers Are Taking Acid, the Flaming Lips exclaimed in the title of their exhaustive 1984-1989 compilation. Indeed they were, if the caustic psychedelia of their first half-decade as a band was any indication. Those tracks (and most of the 1989-1991 material off The Day They Shot A Hole In The Jesus Egg—”Rainin’ Babies,” anyone?) came as something of a shock to my college freshman self, who went out to the Berkshire Mall to buy the whole back catalog after being floored by the millennial one-two punch of The Soft Bulletin and Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots. How on earth had that band grown out of this one? Embryonic, with its refutations of time travel and Philip-K.-Dick-novel-come-to-life aesthetic, is both a return to that era and a denial of the very possibility. Punishing and difficult to digest, songs like “See The Leaves” perform back room lobotomies with sonic daggers and no anesthesia. They suggest the world has only ever been half-formed, and that humanity has chalked in the missing side of a suspect equation. I don’t see how someone could remain unmoved by their blistering paranoia or oozing quiet stretches, the grappling with all sorts of faulty perception and psychic wounds. You may hate the music, but no one who’s been born can argue with the Embryonic experience.
