This is my review for Embryonic. To start you off, here is the flash player from the Lips’ website. Go ahead, rub the fur, and start listening to audible candy.
The latest album by The Flaming Lips, called Embryonic, is everything I was hoping for and more. The first six tracks are good Lips style rock with a couple mild tracks in there. It’s a great start. Then comes track seven, Gemini Syringes. This is where I feel the album cranks up the awesome dial. It’s a great transition song from the first part of the album to the remainder. From here on out, turn up the volume to 11.
The sounds from here on out remind me of some of Pink Floyd’s early departure from their original not-quite-pop sounding stuff. Listen to A Saucerful of Secrets and you’ll hear what I mean.
This is The Flaming Lips at their very best. My favorite tracks to play at near eardrum blowing volume are The Ego’s Last Stand and Worm Mountain. Give the fur a rub to check those ones out!
It’s a great album, and to end it off, here’s Wayne Coyne talking about all the packaging options.
Beck has released a new single that he recorded with Charlotte Gainsbourg. I really don’t know much about Charlotte, but I hope to give her work a listen to soon.
Beck, of course, is a musical genius. This song, called Heaven Can Wait, has a very Beck-like sound to it. The video, which is below there, has so much awesome randomness in it. If you’re into Beck, check out his website by clicking on his name up there in the first word of this post, or on the picture over there. His website is pretty cool and updated frequently with quality work from Mr. Hansen himself. Enjoy!
The Black Heart Procession is one of my favorite totally unique sounding bands. I’d classify the genre as dark piano rock.
1
Here to the right you may listen to their first LP, 1, which was released in 1997. It starts off pretty quietly with a recurring track called The Waiter. Their first three albums, named by numeric order of their release, have a total of 3 tracks called The Waiter. They serve as a kind of mood setting track, each with some variations.
On 1, things really pick up with track 3, Release My Heart. This is the first song in the albums that really give you the full feel of their music. Good piano, some organ, a slow strong beat, and dark lyrics focusing on the heart, and rightly so, considering the band’s name.
Track 7, The Winter My Heart Froze, has a great creepy mixture of organ and piano. It’s short at just under a minute, but a great one to crank up. Square Heart is one of my favorite tracks of theirs. Again, it has a slow, strong beat, great piano, and plenty of heart talk.
2
On to their second album, 2, which you can sample along with their third album, 3 in this nifty little Amazon player. Lala.com didn’t have those albums available at the time of posting, sorry about that.
2 starts with the second The Waiter track, then hits you in the ears with a great accordion track entitled Blue Tears. This is a great song with just an accordion, light acoustic guitar, organ and vocals. It’s a great ballad of heart break full of blue tears falling from lonely eyes. Tobias Nathaniel is, I believe, the lead singer, and he really gets into it here. I’m not sure if he’s half joking, but I love how he just lets it go on this one.
Track 3, A Light So Dim, has a great mix of, yet again, a slow and powerful drum beat mixed with a very strong piano part and a great lyrics line that repeats Time is all we have, so take the time to make the time… and so on. Turn this one up loud.
It’s a bit quiet from here on with some great acoustic guitar and a general dark feel. Then comes track 8, It’s a Crime I Never Told You About the Diamonds in Your Eyes. I can’t think of many songs with a greater title than that. It’s a full on upbeat (for them at least) song that really picks the pace of the album up a notch. After this one, things seem to start falling apart (mood wise) with My Heart Might Stop. Beneath the Ground brings in some new sounds that, believe it or not, sound awesome at a high volume. The third installment of The Waiter finishes this one off and leads us on to the third full studio album.
3
Something I love about these albums is that they stick to the same general feel and even some very similar melodies, but keep it different enough to really separate each album from the others; genius. I love the opening track on 3, We Always Knew. Great organ, piano, and strong vocals. You’ll notice a little distorted sound slip in there a few times along with a rusty swing set sound, that first showed up on 2.
Most of 3 is slower and kind of has a feeling that the main character, if you will, in the story has given up on his lost love. I may be weird in that when I am depressed, I really get into listening to dark, depressing music. These three albums are great for those times. I won’t go into too much details about 3 because I feel I should leave a bit for you to discover on your own. Really though, you should listen to these three albums, I see them as a must have.
Here we have a little video that, with the help of Weird Al Yankovic, explains the brief history of auto tune. You know, today’s pop music? It’s pretty much a synthesizer loop with somebody talking over the top, where the vocals have been auto tuned to death to make it sound like a big pile of terds.
Yes, obviously I’m not a fan of the auto tune plague. Remember that Cher song that started it all? It’s kind of funny how she was ripped into at the time for using such a lame feature. Here we are ten years later and the majority of pop music stars have become rich from following in Cher’s footsteps. That, and saying “shore-tay” over and over.
Anyway, this video presents the history of auto tune in a less biased view and actually has some interesting points. I put this up on Terrible Tuesday simply because it talks about a musical thing that, for now, is making much of the radio painful to listen to.
Hey there superfans! I apologize for the recent lack of posts. Well, I’m returning with a beauty. Observe the Great Daryl Nathan as he sings and plays a synthesizer. About a minute in, beware of some mind blowing video editing!
