I don't know how they do it, but somehow Wayne Coyne and his band The Flaming Lips continue to produce spellbinding records. 1999's The Soft Bulletin was a genius mix of drum looped pop and experimental harmony all with a loungy flair. This time around Coyne goes deeper into his eletronica side with Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots. Track one is a mainstream affair, a pop acoustic number in which Coyne tells us " I don't know where the sunbeams end and the starlight begins, it's all a mystery". By track two the robots of the title (which are a figment of the narrator's imagination) have appeared and start to feel emotions. "Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots pt.1" tells of the narrartor's black-belt friend, "she's a black-belt in karate" who's training to defeat the evil robots. "Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots pt.2" is a sound-effects instrumental of Yoshimi defeating the robots. What does this all have to do with the rest of the songs you ask? Well not much in the way of traditional storytelling. It's mainly about, like the rest of the album, a semi-concept of a future where even though robots attack the earth, our narrator is still worrying about everyday problems, lamenting lost loves ( "In the Morning of the Magicians"), ego trips ("Ego Tripping At the Gates of Hell"), and paranoia ("Are You A Hypnotist?"). The song "All We Have Is Now" sounds like an apocalyptic ending for the Earth: " as logic stands you couldn't meet a man who's from the future/ but logic broke as he appeared/ he spoke about the future "were not gonna make it". But by the end, the lines turn out to be about the narrator's doomed romance. O.K. , so The Flaming Lips lyrical wackiness doesn't gel quite like it did on The Soft Bulletin but Yoshimi is still an infinitely better album.
The sonic atmosphere that appeared on the previous album now permeates the very being of the latter. Yoshimi's true genius shines in the music and not the lyrics. "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots pt.1" is a great pop song that would get a rise out of even the most jaded pop fanatic. The guitar chord that opens and closes "In the Morning of the Magicians" is a sci-fi sounding twang a la The Day the Earth Stood Still which is backed by synthesizer notes that relish in their otherworldliness. "Do You Realize" takes the Lips back to their midwest pop roots by pretty much deleting any samples or loops while the track "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots pt.2" pulls no stops on the electro-freak outs. The only track on the album that doesn't quite work is
"Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell" with its pseudo-hip-hop beats which just never gel with a band like The Flaming Lips. But as a whole, minus the ellusive concept album part, Yoshimi is a sonic beauty that pulls the right heart strings in all the right places. It's a pop lover's dream girl.

Wire: Read & Burn.01 (E.P.)
Available at Amazon.com!
The album cover to Wire's newest E.P.( the first in a planned series) is almost the perfect visual to the music within, gray, dark and minimalistic. But unlike the cover, the music within is not cold nor is it emotionless. There is more drive and Punk-fueled rage in its short 16-minute running time than an entire Korn album. It almost sounds like it could have been recorded alongside Wire's ' 77 debut album Pink Flag.
Lumped in with the punk class of '77 like The Sex Pistols, The Clash, and The Damned, Wire definitely fit the bill but were in many ways more Punk than their contemporaries. For one, The Sex Pistols weren't scary, they were just annoying, The Clash were too safe and The Damned were too silly. Wire though were heavy and raw sounding. Pink Flag was also the most artistic Punk record to come out of that whole anarchistic year. It was dense, minimalistic, and much more anti-pop than anything Joe Strummer was brewing up. Now in 2002 Wire still sound vital. You see, now, unlike in '77, Punk has become the new pop. Classic Pop was little ditties by the Beatles or harmonics by The Mama's and the Papa's. Modern Pop is now 2-minute tame fuzz chord trash. It's not Pop and it's not Punk its just plain commerical garbage. Green Day are not and never really were punk, Rancid are a Clash cover band and Blink 182 should be crushed under their teeny bopper mosh pits. Wire really are the only Punk band left and now they come back once again to deliver us from The Sex Pistols renunion. Read & Burn is 16 minutes of pure vitriol, pure art, pure Punk. "I Don't Understand" almost sounds like Wire are criticizing current Punk as the lyrics pronounce "You've had your chance/ your time is up/ the lights are out", all over a throbbing bass and guitar crunch of white industrial noise that would make Trent Reznor envious. "Germ Ship" is a techno-punk throb that lasts only about 2 mins. But it is an unrelenting 2 mins that only lets up at the end as you are then greeted by track 5, "1st Fast" a dark, fuzzy thrash number. The last song "The Agfers of Kodak" is the poppiest song on the album but don't misunderstand, it is not pop. It simply is the song with a structure closest to pop. The first track in "The Art of Stopping" is probably the best with its driving rhythm and punchy drumbeats. The chorus yelps in a typical British drone "Its all in the art/ Its all in the art/ Its all in the art/ Of stopping". The music then slows to a grinding halt before exploding back into your speakers.
Wire has taken techno and industrial styles and applied them to punk much like they did with certain styles in '77. Except that today, with current studio's advanced technologies, Wire sound even better. In a day and age where Punk sounds like it is hammering its own final nail, Read & Burn sounds downright like a godsend. Amidst yuppie mall punk, and teenie-bopper punk -posers, Wire is the messiah. Forget what revolution you thought that The Hives or The Vines might start because as of right now Wire is the most important Punk band in the world. So all others, read and burn.