The Flaming Lips - Embryonic

October 13th, 2009.

Warner

The Flaming Lips' twelfth studio album Embryonic turns 15. 

A headphone album if there ever was one, Embryonic lives for the attentive listener. It's a dedication to step inside of Embryonic; something you have to commit to. Patience is a virtue; for Embryonic, it's a requirement. Immersive. Squirmy. Sprinkled with that electric fairy dust. Static on your clothes. Static on your mind. Finger-tipped. The leaves? Dying again. The moth? Flying again. The grass? Dying again. The sun? trying again. Trippin' on a pothole. Wobbly roads and trepidations edge. A peripheral fear, of everything. 

Embryonic changes like the seasons. Slow shifts in temperature and surroundings. Things die. Things thrive. Sunny remorse. Sweet-sad. Happy-grief. Well aware of the ups as the downs. Riding the wave of agony. Rip-tides and ripples of suffocating depth. A lot to take in. No time to turn off. 70-minutes of Lips. Lost in the foliage. Traversing the yo-yo of rinse/repeat. Lots of limbs and some fruit. On a scale of limbs to fruit, way more limbs. Stop/start on the motion front. It goes and then it knows. Sprint, rest, re-assess. Up, up, up and down. Slowed down. Mood down. Cool down. You could put it down to the rollercoaster ride that is Embryonic, but it's pretty extreme. It slow burns, then burns all at once. An exhausted energy and then intense heat - sonic combustion after a long period away. A sun from none. The higher the high, the lower the low. The bigger they are, the harder they fall. TIMBERRRRRR. 

That's the difference between us.