See the Leaves

Song: See the Leaves

Artist: The Flaming Lips

Album: Embryonic

While I suppose that a band worth any salt would never make the same album twice, or more, I am having trouble... what's the word, maybe enjoying, the new Flaming Lips record. After what I like to call "finding their sound" with 1999's "The Soft Bulletin," the Lips released two other great records with a new confidence. With their recent release "Embryonic," they throw out the "standard" (if that's the appropriate terms when it comes to the Lips) melodies and go for aural freak-out.

In my opinion, post "Bulletin," and realizing their was a huge audience for that sound they honed it in a bit more and made what I think is their best, "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots," a concept record with actual great songs. "At War With the Mystics" seemed like a left-over ideas album to me, a little filler but still good. On "Embryonic" the band return to their more psychedelic roots for seventy-four minutes of... well, I certainly can't explain it. I haven't given it enough time I suppose but this is a very different Lips than we've come to know. I haven't heard their play-four-discs-at-once aural collage "Zaireeka," but seems they are looking to jump back to that playground. And hey, after that they did "Bulletin," so we'll see what the future holds.

Embryonic is the title of the upcoming twelfth studio album by Oklahoma experimental rock band The Flaming Lips set to be released on October 13, 2009.^[1] It will be the first double album to be released by the band, announced during an interview with the band's frontman Wayne Coyne,

Somewhere along the way it occurred to me that we should do a double album... Just this idea that you can weave a couple of themes into there and you can sprawl a little bit.

As of May 2009, the album is being recorded at multi-instrumentalist Steven Drozd's vacant house.

MGMT contributed to one song, and Karen O on more than one.

On August 13, 2009, the song "See the Leaves" was reviewed and streamed on Pitchfork.com On September 3, 2009, the album was previewed in its entirety on The Fly website, using Wayne Coyne's own track-by-track guide.

On September 17, 2009, the band appeared on "The Colbert Report" and announced that the album would stream in its entirety on Colbertnation.com until 21st September 2009.

Embryonic will stream in full on UK music site ClashMusic.com from October 5, a week ahead of its release.

Featured songs

The style of these tracks will be different from the previous albums, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots and At War with the Mystics, and has been reported to be similar to the style of Joy Division, a Miles Davis group, and John Lennon.

Wayne Coyne says the new record solves their perpetual "dilemma" of what to include on each album, by dumping all their ideas on the follow-up to 2006's At War with the Mystics. Coyne had this to say about the double-LP decision to Billboard: "Some of my favorite records – thinking Beatles' White Album, Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti and even some of the longer things that The Clash have done – part of the reason I like them is that they're not focused. They're kind of like a free-for-all and go everywhere. It's not necessarily because we're prolific, I think we always stay in a sort of perpetual panic of like we never have more songs than we need and we always wonder if any of them are any good to begin with." Coyne notes that Embryonic is less polished than Mystics or 2002's Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots and has a "freak-out vibe". The frontman also notes the influence of Miles Davis's group and slow-burn songs like John Lennon's "Instant Karma!".

Track listing

The track listing for the album was confirmed by the band's drummer, Kliph, on August 2, 2009.

Disc one

1. "Convinced of the Hex" – 3:56
2. "The Sparrow Looks Up at the Machine" – 4:14
3. "Evil" – 5:38
4. "Aquarius Sabotage" – 2:11
5. "See the Leaves" – 4:24
6. "If" – 2:05
7. "Gemini Syringes" (featuring Thorsten Wörmann) – 3:41
8. "Your Bats" – 2:35
9. "Powerless" – 6:57

Disc two

10. "The Ego's Last Stand" – 5:40
11. "I Can Be a Frog" (featuring Karen O) – 2:14
12. "Sagittarius Silver Announcement" – 2:59
13. "Worm Mountain" (featuring MGMT) – 5:21
14. "Scorpio Sword" – 2:02
15. "The Impulse" – 3:30
16. "Silver Trembling Hands" – 3:58
17. "Virgo Self-Esteem Broadcast" – 3:45
18. "Watching the Planets" (featuring Karen O) – 5:16

Enjoy.

See the Leaves