#4 Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots – The Flaming Lips - 2002
"Fight Test"
"One More Robot/Sympathy 3000-21"
"Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Pt. 1"
"Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Pt. 2"
"In the Morning of the Magicians"
"Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell"
"Are You a Hypnotist??"
"It's Summertime"
"Do You Realize??"
"In the Morning of the Magicians"
"Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell"
"Are You a Hypnotist??"
"It's Summertime"
"Do You Realize??"
"All We Have Is Now"
"Approaching Pavonis Mons by Balloon (Utopia Planitia)"
"Approaching Pavonis Mons by Balloon (Utopia Planitia)"
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“When you look inside - all you'll see is a self reflected inner sadness”
Allright we’ve got to it here on this little count down. We will call this 1- D as the top 4 were the big boppers for me in the 2,000’s. Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots is a weird title, The Flaming Lips are a weird band, and this stuff right here is perfectly weird.
Yoshimi, a black belt in Karate that works for the City has to fight evil pink robot machines????? A sort of concept but not really album with song titles like Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell and Approaching Pavonis Mons by Balloon (Utopia Planitia). A monochromatic male voice starts the record:
“The test begins nownownownownownownownownownownowwwwwwwwwww.”
The best single of the decade that was everywhere for a couple of years (Do You Realize??).
This album much like the band that made it exists in its own atmosphere. Yoshimi is awesome because it is a grand open door into that weirdness. The sound on this is just hypnotic. The drum rhythms are so distinct and identifiable to this record. Wayne Coyne's voice lilts above everything in a real beautiful way. The lyrics are existential meanderings about love and all that kind of stuff that range from surface fluff to way deep inner reflections. A couple of the songs are just fun, a couple are down and out, a couple are meditative, and they are all great.
The most enjoyable listen of the decade, I just get all giddy when I play this one.
This is going to be my shortest write up for this all decade list. You just have to hear this one. I just wanna go listen. Nownownownownownow…………………………
Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
ReplyDeleteI got hip to this album a little later than most people, but man, it's great.
Great album to listen to through headphones. There are some tastefully done experimental elements with percussion on otherwise root-rock tracks. I like what they're doing.
YHF - This is the most well reviewed album of the decade from what I've seen on the end of the decade best of lists..
ReplyDeleteI sure do likey too....
#4 Johnny Flynn- A Larum (2008)
ReplyDeleteThis record is pretty new, just released last year. I heard the first single "Tickle Me Pink" on Sirius I was intrigued. I got this record for Christmas & was blown away.
Johnny Flynn & his band The Sussex Wit had created this really great record. They were signed by Lost Highway and were being billed as part of the "British Fold Reclamation Movement". When I listend though, I was sold. All of the songs are written by Flynn & he plays most of the instruments too. Each song plays like an Old English ballad.
He cites Shakespeare & Yeats as some of his influences- in fact the term "A Larum" was used in Shakespeare's manuscripts to describe a ruckus or disturbance offstage or, as Flynn puts it, "where life happens".
This music is not only clever and beautiful and lyrical, but it hearkens back to another time... in fact it transports you there. A place where life was dirtier, survival was not certain, but poetry was admirable and profound and vital and music was just pure bliss.
Everytime I hear this record I feel lucky to have found it.
correction to post above-
ReplyDelete"British FOLK Reclamation Movement"
KG - (Johnny Flynn) This sounds real interesting, I am excited to hear it.
ReplyDelete