Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots
- The Flaming Lips
- Band Name: The Flaming Lips
- Record Label: Warner Bros.
- Release Date: Jul 16, 2002
- Critic Score
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100Even by their standards, Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots is astonishing.... Plainly, this is music abnormally alive with possibilities. [Album of the Month, Aug 2002, p.96]
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100Incredibly, 'Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots' is a record that can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with 'The Soft Bulletin', refining that album's themes and defiantly charging into unchartered musical territories. Another masterpiece.
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100A perfect synthesis of modern studio manipulation and old-time pop craftsmanship, shattering all notions of what pop music can, or for that matter, should be.
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'Yoshimi...' sets yet another benchmark.
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Smartly packaged pop that's as slick as Stereolab, but human enough--thanks to Coyne's earnestness and sincerity--to malfunction in all the right places. [Sep 2002, p.77]
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Funny, beautiful, and moving, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots finds the Flaming Lips continuing to grow and challenge themselves in not-so-obvious ways after delivering their obvious masterpiece.
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90After fifteen years of continually blossoming brilliance, the Flaming Lips can count themselves among the most essential American bands in rock history.
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90If Yoshimi.... lacks the sheer shock value of Bulletin's panoramic delirium, its peak moments are enough to make it one of 2002's most rewarding releases. [Album of the Month, Aug 2002, p.92]
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The measured use of electronics recalls nothing so much as OK Computer, and in some ways Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots sounds like that album might have if Thom Yorke believed in God.
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Endlessly listenable and almost invariably mesmerizing, Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots piles on layers of production prowess without drowning out the beat of its human, humane heart.
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84Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots is a bold and inventive work, brimming with ideas and sublime moments of brilliance. But it's also unfocused and top-heavy.
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Songs like "Fight Test" and "Do You Realize" have various tics--but they're so sweet-souled that such sins are easily forgiven. [19 July 2002, p.74]
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80Anyone else tries this, it'll be like being force-fed Sunny Delight by a battalion of pastel-pashmina'd Pokemon on My Little Ponies. In the hands of The Flaming Lips, with their stellar inventiveness and inquisitive sweetness, it's just utterly noble.
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80A gently involving and moving album, Yoshimi could be the negative image of Radiohead's Kid A: the sound of a rock band using electronica to make music that's inclusive and warm instead of icy and aloof. [#8, p.114]
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80This is one of those exquisitely rare records on which maturity and vitality are equally matched. [Aug 2002, p.127]
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Yoshimi isn't the end-to-end triumph that was 1999's The Soft Bulletin.... But the production is equally ambitious, with burbling electrobeats underpinning sci-fi orchestrations that sound like the brainchild of Esquivel and the Orb.
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80As strange as it is wonderful.
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It almost seems like the Flaming Lips has regressed a little, structurally and rhythmically speaking.
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The whole affair feels a little slighter, a little less important.
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75Simply the Flaming Lips doing what they do best, which is being beautifully weird and loving every minute of it.
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70While the group has done a great job of incorporating even more digital tricks and unique sounds into the mix, they've somehow managed to create a slightly more sterile environment.
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Where The Soft Bulletin was an intricate assessment of rock's potential, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots is merely a rough sketch of a new musical direction.
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70Granted, the Lips can still be innovative, but for perhaps the first time in their storied career, their creativity feels familiar and predictable.
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The lyrics are often corny and thin.
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60While appreciating Yoshimi for its merits poses little problem, actually enjoying it is more difficult.
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60Listening to Coyne retreat behind the faux-Power Rangers horror-movie shtick he's created here is puzzling and ultimately disappointing. [#55, p.73]
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Yoshimi has its moments, but it sounds like leftover brilliance from its older, better brother, padded out with filler to make a new album.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 61 out of 64
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Mixed: 1 out of 64
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Negative: 2 out of 64
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