Hey everyone! I have volunteered to make this weekly post for the foreseeable future since ren already does so much for this community.
This week we have another choice from ren, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots by the Flaming Lips! Whether this is your 1st or 100th time listening to this album we want to hear your thoughts.
Tell us what you like about this album. Tell us what you dont like about it. Tell us a story you have about it or a memory it triggers!
And then tell us what albums you want to discuss next! I have picked for next week but I don’t want ren and I picking every week so let’s hear some suggestions!
Upcoming
10/17 - Sonic Youth - Daydream Nation (1988)
10/24 - TBD
Previous Discussions
Disclaimer: First of all I apologize if you are seeing this post more than once. Moving forward I intend to make this post on Tuesdays. In fact I made this exact post Tuesday and again Wednesday this week from my midwest.social account but there appear to have been federation issues and it wasn’t showing up outside that instance. So I made a lemmy.world account today to redo the post again.
God I fucking love this album. The whole thing is perfect, but in particular Do You Realise? is just incredible.
I still can’t decide if this, or Soft Bulletin is their best album.
I need to give Soft Bulletin another listen now. It’s been a while for me
2 10’s without a doubt
That intro track is all you to listen to in order to understand why this album is so highly rated. Damn Cat Stevens for what he did to The Flaming Lips over some generic chords
Fight Test is maybe my favorite song on the album and I’m no fan of soundalike lawsuits - no shit artists get inspired by and borrow from other artists.
But the Cat Stevens thing was a little more than generic chords. The entire vocal melody was lifted from Father & Son.
Still sucks that it happened, but I think it was fair in the context of our current handling of these things. Here’s hoping we can one day fix our copyright system and not have to deal with these stupid assed suits anymore.
Pachelbel’s Canon In D Major would
disagreeagree.Like I said, I don’t LIKE the way it works…nor am I a musician or lawyer. I actually love hearing musicians lift from others. I just can understand the decision.
If anyone has the means and a proper setup for it, the surround sound mix of this album is a crazy experience.
My brother had the multidisc version of this album. You needed a separate stereo for each cd and played them at the same time.
That was such a dumb release, I love it. Perfectly on brand from them.
The actual surround mix itself is fantastic, lots of motion and depth.
I could be wrong here, but I believe you’re thinking of Zaireeka.
There is a 6 disk version of Yoshimi, but it’s all demos and remixes. Zaireeka was specifically released to be played as four disks simultaneously like you described.
I was working in the music department at Borders Books & Music when this came out. We were 10 years past the explosion of grunge and while there were some great albums being released, shit just felt like it had gotten stale and bland.
Then The Lips dropped Yoshimi and it blew our minds. It was creative, cohesive, unique, and the songs were well written. We played the shit out of it in the store. Since then, it’s been a constant in my life, always flirting with being in my top 10 albums list (most days I’d put it in there).
My family went through a string of loss over the course of a few years and I spent a lot of time with the album. While it’s ostensibly a song about a failed relationship, Fight Test came to more generally be a song about overcoming loss for me. It became so closely entwined with death that I get tears in my eyes almost every time I hear it now. Not in a sad way, necessarily, just as a reminder that some people I’ve loved are gone and it wasn’t what any of us had planned, but we go on and try to live our lives the best way we can.
With that part said, the two songs surrounding Do You Realize seem like weak points, but not total stinkers.
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It had been a while since I listened to this band so I gave this album a fresh listen earlier this week and the whole thing is great. But I absolutely love the electronic freak out of the title track pt 2.
In the context of the album I interpret it as the robots response to pt 1 of the title track. It’s a increbile way to introduce some more experimental sounds and also build up the world around this album.
I remember telling my wife during Flaming Lips at Big Day Out that I want Do You Realise played at my funeral. 20-ish years later I still feel the same.
Great album to introduce children to indie rock
@kvn2 Only thing I would add is that I highly recommend catching them live if you haven’t.
Yeah I’ve heard that they put on a great show! Maybe someday!
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Don’t forget to recommend some albums you’d like to discuss for future album club weeks! Reply to this comment with ideas!
