The Flaming Lips
Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots

THE REVIEW

“But that moment never came”.

Why are there certain things in life that we don't do before it's too late, even when we have the opportunity and almost the necessity?

For instance, I had never reviewed this album until today, even though it was the first Flaming Lips album I experienced "in real time," meaning I bought it when it was released and even listened to it live, at the former Velvet in Rimini, back in 2003.

In short, when all is said and done, I loved it, but I never declared my love publicly, at least not here.

What do I remember from that time, now that, lying on the sofa at home, I have decided to (re)listen to it through headphones?

Well, I remember that often, in those distant days, I would lie in the same position, a "pink robot" (I understood this later) sprawled on the same sofa, relaxing after an intense workday, listening to music that was so evidently different from the previous album.

Gone were the orchestral songs and psychedelic honey that made me fall in love with The Soft Bulletin, the first Lips album I bought.

In their place, synthetic sounds and digital pulses, rather cold songs, singable (especially Yoshimi battles.. Pt.1), catchy but not emotionally engaging, in which, however, in the interludes and between the internal folds and between one song and another there were, in the manner of musical interludes or closing themes of small existential-flavored films, small instrumental pieces with particular charm.

There it is, I would say, the melancholy of pink robots, in a few years.

Songs like “One More Robot/Sympathy 3000...”, “In the Morning of the Magicians”, "Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell".

And the sound of the sunlight that pulses steadily at the end of “It's summertime” illuminated the room as I watched the ceiling, before that invitation to happily embrace that very sad destiny uniting all humanity, which is “Do You Realize”.

There it is, the melancholy of pink robots, all because we can't realize that only the present exists..

And meanwhile, I imagined, and I was there, and I wasn't there, and meanwhile, I went back and forth in time, inexorably.

And so, now that the notes of “All We Have Is Now” (perhaps my favorite song of the album) dissolve into the air, I wait, after talking to him, imitating the protagonist of the song, to shake off this pink robot that resembles me so much (he must be about twenty years older than me), so, when the rarefied notes of "Approaching Pavonis Mons by Balloon" are still dissolving in the air, I take off the headphones and go to bed.

Perhaps it was just my imagination, anyway tomorrow awaits another hard day's work, not before taking my daughter to school..