mail: daniel_fjall@hotmail.com
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the soft bulletin yoshimi battles the pink robots
the Soft Bulletin Released: 1999 Rating: 7/10 Track listing: 1. Race For The Price/ 2. A Spoonful Weighs A Ton/ 3. The Spark That Bled/ 4. Slow Motion/ 5. What’s The Light/ 6. The Observer/ 7. Waitin’ For A Superman/ 8. Suddenly Everything Has Changed/ 9. The Gash/ 10. Feeling Yourself Disintegrate/ 11. Sleeping On The Roof/ 12. Race For The Prize/ 13. Waitin’ On A Superman/ 14. Buggin’
Soft Bulletin is similar to the Beach Boys’ masterpiece Pet Sounds in many ways, but maybe even more Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of The Moon. For Pink Floyd comparisons check out The Observer and Sleeping On The Roof. Songs that thanks to the bass and synthesizers sounds like Wayne just came back from a trip to the dark side of the moon. Also, most of the songs have a feeling of free space in the arrangements which reminds more of Pink Floyd rather than Beach Boys. You can still tell that Wayne Coyne knows and appreciates the past glories in the history of pop music. The musicians behind this album clearly set as a goal to make a very atmospheric and moody album. The creativity is quite impressive, even if it’s only borrowed from greater and more classic bands. Too bad that they were too busy making a well-produced album, and forgot to write good songs. There are great songs on here, but most of the songs are so long and fail to hold your attention all the way. Almost every song is like a little pop symphony with different little parts in them. Some of the parts are fantastic, some of them are boring so I guess you can say that there are no single songs that you could call fillers, but there are fillers within the songs. Did that make sense? Nonetheless, there are touches of genius spread out here and there, and you might love it. I know I want to, but it’s a bit too unfocused in some places which leave me just enjoying it in parts.
Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots Just like the Soft Bulletin’, Yoshimi is to a certain extent based mood, atmosphere and sound pictures but I the songwriting is a bit stronger this time around. The Flaming Lips focus more on making good songs rather than making intellectual arrangements hidden with synthesizers. The synthesizers are still here, but now they seem to have been used to bring out the very best of every song. Used to amplify whatever feeling the song in question wants to deliver. On The Soft Bulletin’ it rather seemed like the synthesizers were used to make the band look smart and the Lips had troubles keeping on the right side of that line that marks the difference between “pretentious” and “clever”. Now the songs are stripped down compared to the previous album and they really benefits by that. Overdubs has not been used any more than needed. At least mostly. There are a few tracks here, Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots Pt. 2 being the most obvious one. The highpoints are many. Opening Flight Test steals it’s melody and some lyrical ideas directly from the great song Father And Son written by Cat Stevens and later introduced to a younger audience in the 90’s by a less good cover by the pop group Boyzone, featuring Ronan Keating. Normally stuff like that really bugs me, but Wayne and the others do it so openly, without shame that I can’t help but love it. Melodic guitar on top of acoustic guitar strumming and even more melodic bass guitar is never wrong. If you add wonderful vocal performances to that you have Ego Tripping At The Gates of Hell. A wonderful song. Do You Realize?? Sounds exactly like The Soft Bulletin’ and it actually works better here, using many of the same recording tricks and creating a feeling exactly as on the 99-album. Only, this song is better than most of the other songs on that album. Generally this album is better than The Soft Bulletin’ because the songs are a bit better, and not buried with production. The Flaming Lips has created something that recembles a masterpiece and one of the best albums released in 2002.
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