Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots

The latest release from The Flaming Lips is not as good as The Soft Bulletin. There I said it. And for every album that the band puts out from here on in their career, they will never top the impact that The Soft Bulletin had. Granted, Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots is in the same vein and definetly has some remarkable and memorable songs on it, but it's not the extreme change of pace or redefinition of sound that The Soft Bulletin was. Okay, so enough glorification of an album that's already been released and already been praised by any publication with any tiny amount of common sense. What makes Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots worth listening to? Everything about it. The band has put together another batch of songs that seem to defy categorization - it just sounds like The Flaming Lips. The band has developed a sound that combines lazy vocals drifting through soothing instrumentation occasionally interrupted by big (or fast) drums. The album has a consistency throughout that occasionally hurts the overall listening. If the album doesn't have your attention you may be surprised that you're actually several songs in with little noticeable change in pace. However, "Do You Realize??" demands to be noticed, regardless of your attention span - and holds the title of Best Song on Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots to this here reviewer (yea yea, it's the single.. so what?). "It's Summertime" and "All We Have Is Now" are also noteable tracks, mostly due to their somewhat personal nature. Yoshimi is The Soft Bulletin if it wasn't written blantantly about personal matters and presented itself under the guise of a mild concept album about a young Japanese girl battling pink robots. The strength of The Soft Bulletin was in it's extreme redefinition of the band and it's personal subject matter. Yoshimi takes that redefintion and proves that it wasn't a fluke, but unfortunately the band has regressed more into their veiled (and somewhat goofy) subject matter. Either way, we still love them and give this album the Silent Uproar Seal Of Approval. [www.flaminglips.com]