6 Dec 2009 by Chris     No Comments    Posted under: Entertainment

Albums of the Decade: No.15

Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots by The Flaming Lips

“Do you realise… that everyone you know, someday, will die?”
Times 100 Best Albums of the Decade: No.36
Pitchfork Top 200 Albums of the Decade: No.67
Uncut 150 Albums of the Decade: No.11

This one came out of nowhere for me, some considerable time after its 2002 release. It was the band’s tenth album, f’r'goodnessake, and somehow they’d totally passed me by. That said, I haven’t been that blown away by many of the others which I’ve tracked down since. But Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots? What an oddball – and brilliant – record. The critics loved this at the time, it seems, and rightly so. There are two standout singles, “Do You Realize?” and “Fight Test”, as well as the bizarre title track, a sort of Manga cartoon set to music, but my favourite is the out-of-character instrumental “Approaching Pavonis Mons by Balloon (Utopia Planitia)” which is way too short at just three minutes long.

If you want an idea of what the title track is like, this is The Flaming Lips’ frontman Wayne Coyne on the plot of a musical which is apparently in development based on the story: ”There’s the real world and then there’s this fantastical world. ‘This girl, the Yoshimi character, is dying of something. And these two guys are battling to come visit her in the hospital. And as one of the boyfriends envisions trying to save the girl, he enters this other dimension where Yoshimi is this Japanese warrior and the pink robots are an incarnation of her disease. It’s almost like the disease has to win in order for her soul to survive. Or something like that.” I’ve no idea what he’s on either, but I want some.

• Albums of the Decade: No.16
• Albums of the Decade: No.17
• Albums of the Decade: No.18
• Albums of the Decade: No.19
• Albums of the Decade: No.20

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