The quest for free, unfettered creativity can sometimes lead straight over a cliff. And so The Flaming Lips crash and burn with Embryonic (Warner Bros.), a noisy, tuneless “double” album (on one CD) that falls prey to all manner of sophomoric excess and discards the techno-psychedelic-dream-pop that the band brought to sublime fruition with 2006’s At War with the Mystics.
The unfettered freedom bit is not simply my interpretation. In an eloquent essay that’s more interesting and entertaining than the 70 minutes of music it came with, leader Wayne Coyne documents the band’s goal to strip the creative process of filters, premeditation and fear. “So, yes, more free!!! Now at last to be free from the discipline and focus. Free to fail … free to lose ourselves,” he writes.
Indeed.
This article appears in Oct 22-28, 2009.