Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots |
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Released: July 16, 2002 Peak: 50 US, 13 UK, -- CN, 62 AU, 12 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): 0.57 US, 0.32 UK, 0.89 world (includes US and UK) Genre: alternative rock |
Tracks:Song Title (Writers) [time] (date of single release, chart peaks)
Tracks written by Wayne Coyne, Steven Drozd, and Michael Ivins unless noted otherwise. Total Running Time: 47:25 The Players:
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Rating: 4.029 out of 5.00 (average of 29 ratings)
Awards:(Click on award to learn more).
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A Commercial and Critical Breakthrough“There are ways to demonstrate your commercial status and there are means to prove you are the coolest mothers currently striding the earth. Generally, these two are mutually exclusive so it is illustrative of the Flaming Lips’ unique success that they managed to combine both in one gloriously irrelevant moment.” RDAs they had been “underground achievers for much of the 1980s and 1990s” RD no one anticipated 2000’s The Soft Bulletin becoming a critical success. They returned in 2002 with Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. It “was well-received critically and commercially, helping the band break into popularity.” WK It is “funny, beautiful, and moving” AM and “finds the Flaming Lips continuing to grow and challenge themselves.” AM Billboard called it “as strange as it is wonderful.” WK Fortune said it was “a lush and haunting electronic symphony.” WK The album is “a sublime fusion of Bulletin’s newfound emotional directness, the old-school playfulness of Transmissions From the Satellite Heart, and, more importantly, exciting new expressions of the group’s sentimental, experimental sound.” AM “While the album isn’t as immediately impressive as the equally brilliant and unfocused Soft Bulletin, it’s more consistent, using a palette of rounded, surprisingly emotive basslines; squelchy analog synths; and manicured acoustic guitars.” AM “Electronic bleeps and Pink Floyd-esque prog-rock mix freely with accessible singalongs in an overall concept loosely themed around killer robots and a gutsy heroine.” RD Concept Album or Not?Flaming Lips’ lead singer Wayne Coyne took the name for that heroine from Yoshimi P-We of Boredoms/OOIOO when he noted “that her unusual singing style sounds like she is battling monsters.” WK She ended up performing on the album.While Yoshimi is often considered a concept album, Coyne has insisted that was not the intent. WK The story of Yoshimi is “only directly apparent in the first four tracks.” WK Overall, though, the album’s lyrics “concern a diverse array of subject matter, mostly melancholy ponderings about love, mortality, artificial emotion, pacifism, and deception.” WK Billboard called it “a somber rumination on love and survival in an unfathomable world.” WK The Songs“Few bands can craft life-affirming songs about potentially depressing subjects (the passage of time, fighting for what you care about, good vs. evil) as the Flaming Lips, and on Yoshimi, they’re at the top of their game. Do You Realize?? is the standout,” AM It is “the most life-affirming anthem about death” RD and “so immediately gorgeous that it’s obvious that it’s the single. It’s also the most obviously influenced by The Soft Bulletin, but it’s even catchier and sadder, sweetening such unavoidable truths like ‘Do you realize that everyone you know someday will die?’ with chimes, clouds of strings, and angelic backing vocals.” AM“Yoshimi features some of the sharpest emotional peaks and valleys of any Lips album – the superficially playful Fight Test is surprisingly bittersweet” AM while also blending “Wayne Coyne’s folksy appeal with a surreal party soundtrack.” RD Because the vocal melody is similar to “Father and Son” by Cat Stevens, he was given a credit on the song after “a relatively uncontentious settlement.” WK Coyne said, “’Fight Test’ is not a reference necessarily to the ideas of ‘Father and Son,’ but definitely a reference to the cadence, the melody and chord progression.’” WK One More Robot/ Sympathy 3000-21 is “a sleekly melancholy tale of robots developing emotions.” AM In the Morning of the Magicians is “an aptly named electronic art rock epic that sounds like a collaboration between the Moody Blues and Wendy Carlos.” AM Meanwhile, “sad songs like All We Have Is Now and Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell are leavened by witty lyrics and production tricks.” AM “Paradoxically, the Lips use simpler arrangements to create more diverse sounds on Yoshimi, spanning the lush, psychedelic reveries of It’s Summertime; the instrumental Approaching Pavonis Mons by Balloon” AM (which one a Grammy for Best Rock Instrumental Performance), “the dubby Are You a Hypnotist?; and the barely organized chaos of Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Pt. 2, which defeats the evil metal ones with ferocious drums, buzzing synths, and the razor sharp howl of the Boredoms’ Yoshimi.” AM |
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First posted 3/29/2008; last updated 8/24/2026. |
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