San Diego Serenade

These expectations bring us back to the “Yeah Yeah Yeah Song.” It starts off with the name of the song being chanted, not just the three times from the title, but over and over, with some additional wailing that sounds like Tarzan cruising through the trees, until the beat kicks in a few seconds later. This consists of guitar, drums, bass, handclaps and a great fuzzed out guitar lick. The music only builds from there. Different vocal effects join in on the chorus as Wayne Coyne asks, “With all your power, what would you do?” It’s the kind of strangely uplifting chorus that fans of “Do You Realize??” will instantly be chanting along to. The song chugs along nicely before hitting a peak with a minute and a half left. Here the band put everything they’ve got into creating a song that you can jump up and down to, sing along to, do handsprings to, run in circles to, juggle bowling pins that are on fire to, all while you’re dancing like a fool with one of those costumed kangaroos on stage with them. It’s fantastic.

But like I said, there’s nothing that really comes close to capturing this sort of magic again. The next song, “Free Radicals”, quickly abandons the momentum that has been built. Not just in terms of subject matter, but literally in terms of song craft. It sounds like the “Yeah Yeah Yeah Song” ran into a brick wall and shattered. Free Radicals lurches along in disparate segments of instrumentation. Guitars and vocals come and go as they please, along with background vocals and noises. The beat doesn’t even really kick in until halfway through the song, and there’s no particular melody to be found. Coyne does adopt a strange vocal effect, which sounds along the lines of Spoon doing Prince on “I Turn My Camera On,” but its novelty isn’t enough to salvage an enjoyable listen.

The record keeps on moving through a few forgettable and softer tracks. “The Sound Of Failure” sounds like a Steely Dan style track with a flute and jazzy guitar picking. It shifts into a two minute instrumental segment called “It’s Dark…Is It Always This Dark??” towards the end that mainly features additional wind instruments. It pretty much serves as an invitation to switch to the next track, “Cosmic Autumn Rebellion”. It continues the trend of long stretches of song without any sort of beat whatsoever, as Coyne pontificates about the significance of the birds flying away for the winter. The theme of the record might be introduced here, as he speaks of an unnamed group of individuals that will “Destroy You With Their Lies.” Eventually the fuzzy guitar from the YYY Song kicks in again, but simply plays a slower,soaring progression over huge crashing drums as the song fades out for the last thirty seconds.

The album moves on in a similar pattern, gradually fading away instead of building towards anything consequential. An instrumental track, “The Wizard Turns On…” seems to attempt to advance the concept of the record, and to its credit, it does convey quite well the sense that some sort of machine is being turned on. It even features mechanical sounds the likes of which Rahzel used to make while beatboxing for The Roots, and you would wonder why anybody wanted to listen to someone mimicking mechanical noises. Well, that question still stands.

Two exceptions to the slow, spacy, rhythm-less sound that permeates the majority of the record are the single “The W.A.N.D.” and “It Overtakes Me”. Both of these songs feature prominent riffs, and a much needed dose of energy. “The W.A.N.D.”, however, seems to feature nothing but the riff, which with little variation grows repetitive by the end, and “It Overtakes Me”, which is the second song to feature more than one movement. Its fuzzy, flanged guitars unfortunately give way once again to soaring background choruses and sustained synth chords. It is worth noting that both of these songs, like the “Yeah Yeah Yeah Song” also feature good old fashioned, Queen at Live Aid, Darkness “I Believe In A Thing Called Love,” Neil Diamond “Every Song He Ever Performed”, style handclaps!

The fact that these are the three songs where the Lips sound to have some life breathed into them cannot be coincidental. When the band lets their guard down and decides to have a bit of fun, the listener can tell that they are doing so. Nobody who has ever seen the Flaming Lips live can really think that they take themselves too seriously, but this album seems to dwell on songs and music where they don’t seem to be enjoying themselves as much as you’ve heard them do in the past. The feeling is unfortunately contagious to the listener. By the time the spare, reserved sounding album closer “Goin’ On” comes around, it provides a welcome relief from the destination-less swells and sustains of the rest of the album. Wayne’s voice remains vulnerable and untampered with in the studio on this track, and just some low key piano and guitar accompaniment make it by far the least theatrical song on the album. As it too eventually fades away, the listener is tempted to head back to track one, just to leave this latest Flaming Lips experience on a joyous note.