The Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots

Belvedere Jehosophat - Monday, 24 November 2003 - Print Version

I bought a ticket to the Big Day Out specifically out of fear of The Flaming Lips not doing a sideshow of their own — knowing, incidentally, that there's a 99% chance that they will.

Who would have known that, with Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, The Flaming Lips could have matched the poignancy and utter beauty of The Soft Bulletin?

Well, me, but only because I'd bought both albums well after they'd been released and, based on the reviews I'd read, knew that, with Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, The Flaming Lips had matched the poignancy and utter beauty of The Soft Bulletin.
Still, entropic timeline considerations aside, it may surprise you to know that, with Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, The Flaming Lips have matched the poignancy and utter beauty of The Soft Bulletin - though it probably shouldn't.

I only own three Flaming Lips albums—including this one—so, and this is going by what I've read, I can say that this is the first album that doesn't feature a radical departure in sound from one released previous to it. That is, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots is stylistically closer to The Soft Bulletin than what it is to, say, Transmissions from the Satellite Heart.

Umm: I suggest you buy this album — it lacks the chromatic aberration of the one that came before.

Also, this band wrote these lyrics:
Do you realise - that you have the most beautiful face?
Do you realise - we're floating in space?
Do you realise - that happiness makes you cry?
Do you realise - that everyone you know someday will die?

And instead of saying all of your goodbyes
Let them know that you realise that life goes fast
It's hard to make the good things last
You realise the sun doesn't go down
It's just an illusion created by the world spinning 'round

It's become readily apparent that they are aware of what Calvino described as "the inferno of the living" and are making people endure, giving them space.

Belvedere Jehosophat