The Flaming Lips pretty much reached their ultimate sticking-place, artistically, with The Soft Bulletin and Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots: two records of rubbery, crooning, mostly yellow-streaked pop music, with a good few weird divergences (more so on Yoshimi than on the purer-distilled Soft Bulletin though) that hinted at the band's psychedelic past as oddball merry pranksters (as did appearing on Top Of The Pops with Justin Timberlake dressed as a dolphin, for that matter). So, that's the Lips.Did I even hear At War With The Mystics at the time? I seem to remember something, but I don't own a copy. And I didn't see Christmas On Mars either, so in many ways I have absolutely no idea what Wayne Coyne et al have been doing in the interim between Yoshimi and Embryonic, but as far as I can tell its just sort of a logical progression, a big long album that openly confuses the pop and meandering elements of the band into something that isn't, like, a statement or anything, but it is a really listenable album and stuff. Of particular note is opener 'Convinced By The Hex', which I think is something like I would want Liars to sound like when they're about 60. Only they've gone crap now, haven't they, so I guess they probably won't.Where else to go with this? Well, it doesn't change what The Flaming Lips have ever meant to me, but I do really like it. I think if you like The Flaming Lips then you will too!

Buy the album on Amazon | [itunes link="http://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/convinced-hex/id333530288?uo=4" title="The_Flaming_Lips-Embryonic_(Deluxe_Version)_(Album)" text="iTunes"]