“Why,” said he, “are you muddying the water I’m drinking?”

Fearfully, the lamb replied: “I’m sorry, but how could I do that? I am drinking the water that has passed first by you.”

And he, defeated by that fact, said, “Six months ago, you talked about me behind my back.”

The lamb replied, “But I wasn’t even born yet!”

“By Hercules, then it was your father who spoke badly of me,” said the wolf. And he pounced on the lamb and killed it unjustly

In 1991 my favorite band in the world, hands-down, was Pixies. Ask my wife. “Bossanova,” “Surfer Rosa” and “Doolittle” were the only cassettes in my car. I listened to them over and over and over again. They are still my favorite band to this day (although, The Smiths will always be right there).

Here’s the thing—in 1991 Pixies released “Trompe Le Monde.” Of course, I bought it the day it came out. I rushed out to the car and stuck it in the cassette deck and listened. I wanted to like it. It was difficult. On first listen (especially in 1991 when distortion hadn’t yet come into vogue) it sounded like a bunch of noise. And on second, third and fourth listen. I was starting to worry—was this the Emperor’s New Clothes? Had Black Francis lost it?

And then one day an interesting thing happened—it clicked. I finally understood it. The music was so new and groundbreaking that my brain had to rewire itself to grasp it. Suddenly songs like “Distance Equals Rate Times Time” and “The Sad Punk” made perfect sense…like a jigsaw puzzle that had assembled itself before my eyes. And now “Trompe Le Monde” is my favorite Pixies record.

Which brings us to “Embryonic.”

The Flaming Lips have not always been an easy listen. Their earlier records like “Transmissions From The Satellite Heart” and “Clouds Taste Metallic” take a few listens before you get into the groove.

That changed with “The Soft Bulletin,” an absolute masterpiece from 1999 (and up until now, my favorite Lips record). Even though it’s still strange, songs like “Race For The Prize” and “Waitin’ For A Superman” are catchy right off the bat. This trend continued with “Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots” where numbers like “Fight Test” and “Do You Realize??” (their biggest hit) grab you from the get-go and didn’t take a lot of effort to understand.

Their 2006 effort, “At War With The Mystics,” was slightly more experimental but not really difficult. “The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song” and “The W.A.N.D.” would appeal to even straight-up AOR rocker types, and “The Sound Of Failure” is simply beautiful.

But now Wayne Coyne and The Lips give us “Embryonic.” This double-length opus is every bit as strange and difficult as “Trompe Le Monde” was in 1991.

First, there is the production. The Flaming Lips had made a name for themselves as being geniuses in the studio. In fact, in one interview Wayne Coyne said he considered the studio itself to be an instrument. “The Soft Bulletin” and “Yoshimi” are recorded with such care and precision they are like vector files of music…no matter how large you expanded the sound it would still be crystal clear and resonant.

The production on “Embryonic” is something else altogether. Some of the songs sound like they were recorded on a broken Walkman. The first time I heard “Convinced Of The Hex” on a preview EP a few weeks ago, I thought the recording was messed up. It sounds like someone poured Diet Coke on the microphone. But I have to admit…after fifteen listens now, it’s one of my all-time favorite Lips songs, and I think the style of recording is one of the key reasons why.

The entire album is about mood. I don’t think there is a real “single” on this record. A radio station would think they received a damaged copy. But for mood, it’s becoming my favorite album on my iPod.

This is a record that is designed to be listened to from beginning to end. I guess you could compare it to Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” (except that album depresses me…sorry Bill). Listening to “Embryonic” is an experience. Songs like “Silver Trembling Hands” and “The Ego’s Last Stand” will stay with you long after listening. It feels like pure genius at work.

The highlight to me is a song called “The Impulse” that sounds like, of all things, a robot singing a torch song. I know that seems nutty, but it’s the number that grabs me the most every time I hear it.

To sum: most people won’t like this album at first—but be patient. In time, I have no doubt that “Embryonic” will be viewed as The Flaming Lips’ masterpiece.

My rating: 5 stars (out of 5)

Jeff Starr is a San Francisco-based Impressionist oil painter who concentrates on themes of Japan, Dreams, Europe and California.

http://www.jeffreydalestarr.com/

As a teenager I was ‘played’ by music like everyone else, allowing it to heighten my exuberance and deepen my moodiness. But this was all unconscious. Music fits in seamlessly with our hormonal and social cycles and phases in our youth, blending in with the background subcultures we attach ourselves to and the pensive and philosophical modes we discover reading Tess of the d’Urbervilles for English class. Like everyone else, I was listening to Pearl Jam and Nirvana. Good tunes. Lots of fist-shaking and irreverence.

An older friend of mine, now touring with his bass, took pity on my lost soul, thinking I might like to broaden my artistic horizons. He himself had been turned on to Jazz Fusion by a couple of his music instructors, the very ones I would soon be listening to, and he in turn graced me with a handed-down cassette tape, even then a well-outdated format. I did not find it terribly interesting. It lacked a consistent melodic pattern and thump, thus failing to fire my synapses. And if this really was Jazz, why wasn’t it more, you know…“smooth”? The guitar seemed to be talking too much, and I wanted it to straighten itself out and sing. There was so much confusion, as if the musicians didn’t know the proper roles of each instrument, or weren’t sure where the song was going.

I had listened to the whole tape, absentmindedly, a couple of times. Then, as I was driving, I heard a random tapping I couldn’t locate. I knew I had heard this tapping before, perhaps even on this same stretch of highway. What in the world would make the car do that? Bingo. I rewound the tape and there it was: Tap. Tap-Tap…Tap. Ok, the drummer was hitting the side of the drum or a piece of wood, but why would it be so random? And why did it fade in so oddly over a guitar solo that it had nothing to do with? This music was not blending in with the background and rhythms of my world, but rather pulling me into its world. Rather than leaning back, tapping my foot, and bobbing my head, this made me sit up and lean in.

The tune was “Renegade,” on Tribal Tech’s Nomad. And through it, I discovered Jazz. But I found the learning curve steep, particularly on a tape already deteriorated though repeated play, and I was perhaps more than ordinarily dense musically. High school band had not prepared me for this. It was like straining to eavesdrop on a conversation, trying to recognize words I was anticipating based on the few un-muffled bits I could hear. As I played the tape again, this time with attention and a determination to listen to the music on its own terms, it opened up for me a three-dimensional world of color and movement.

I found Jazz to be unlike anything I had listened to before. It had such an inner complexity that I would try to tune into a single instrument throughout each piece. I could listen to each track four or five times, and feel like each one was different. Each instrument was utterly independent of the others, and yet I could see one building toward another, then intertwining and bouncing off each another. The drums could not be held to predictable fills, and the bass insisted on speaking for itself. It was exhilarating.

I won’t bother with the zeal of my conversion as I developed an ear for the music, or the heartrending tales of searching for unobtainable albums before iTunes. The important part is the bliss of listening and really hearing it. Unlike pop music, which can quite easily stir the emotions, Jazz also stirs the mind. It cannot be listened to passively.

One of my favorite quotations is something Igor Stravinsky wrote when discussing the process of writing music. He says:

“I experience a sort of terror when, at the moment of setting to work and finding myself before the infinitude of possibilities that present themselves, I have the feeling that everything is permissible to me. . . .Will I then have to lose myself in this abyss of freedom? To what shall I cling in order to escape the dizziness that seizes me before the virtuality of this infinitude? . . . I shall overcome my terror and shall be reassured by the thought that I have the seven notes of the scale and its chromatic intervals at my disposal, that strong and weak accents are within my reach, and that in all of these I possess solid and concrete elements which offer me a field of experience just as vast as the upsetting and dizzy infinitude that had just frightened me. It is into this field that I shall sink my roots, fully convinced that combinations which have at their disposal twelve sounds in each octave and all possible rhythmic varieties promise me riches that all the activity of human genius will never exhaust.” (Poetics of Music, 63-65.)

For me, Stravinsky here reaches beyond even music, but that’s different story. In context, he’s talking about the liberties and constraints of music, and the liberties in the constraints. He goes on to discuss even ‘surrounding himself with obstacles.’ Jazz is just that. It is exploring the multi-dimensional shape and topography of musical space. Truly dizzying.

Your predilection for deception is no way to gain my affection.
Though you think you’re beyond detection,
I see through you with my well-honed skills of perception
And thus no warm reception.
All you’ll face is rejection.

Are you actually in my face? Screamin’ I’ll be back, that I need you?  Oh please, Boo-Boo, how dare thee?
See, cuz the being alone thing, that’s something that just don’t scare me.
Particularly when I’m such a lovely vision of prosperity whilst wrapped up in my singularity

I do believe this look works for me; I’m rockin’ it like it’s a mink.
You’re so superfluous to this equation so go ahead shoo! Off you slink.
I have but one regret, and that’s that it took me this long to wake up, to take this moment stop and think.
But I’ve got my bearings now, both feet solidly beneath me instead of teetering on the brink.

So listen closely and please take note
I have no time for you to brag and gloat
This player mentality don’t get my vote.
I don’t pander and I don’t dote
On a boy playin’ at bein’ a man and who just missed the boat.
So I’ll grab my keys, grab my bag and coat

And—wait a minute—this is my place, you walk out the door.
Stop looking so hurt and confused, that act is such a bore.
You’ve been playing the same, tired role so long and you’re rotten to the core.
What? What’s that you say . . . you’re sorry and you want more?
Can’t do it. I’m not a naïve little girl, and I already know the score.

You’re so pitifully, painfully pathetic; you actually believe your own hype.
But it’s great for me to be able to shake it off instead of grudge and gripe.

You’ve given me pure hell, and you still expect my gratitude.
You need to rein it in and check yourself; I will give you no more latitude.
I’m finished—y’ hear me? Done. With you and your stank attitude.

See, this is all about me, and my joy you cannot rob.
I can’t rely on you for my bliss, and I won’t allow you to bring on the sobs.
I’ve learned this lesson very well – happiness is an inside job.

So I have nothing left to say to you—just a wave and a shrug and a sigh.
Oh wait, there is on last thing . . . what was it again? Oh yes

GOODBYE.