Embryonic is the twelfth studio album by American rock band the Flaming Lips released on October 13, 2009, on Warner Bros. The band's first double album, it was released to generally positive reviews and became their most successful album in the US, peaking at number 8 on the Billboard 200. This is the first album where drummer Kliph Scurlock is credited alongside the rest of the band despite touring with the group since 2002 and contributing drum parts to the previous album At War with the Mystics (2006).
Production
News of the album first surfaced in an interview with Wayne Coyne, who stated that "Somewhere along the way it occurred to me that we should do a double album... Just this idea that you can weave a couple of themes into there and you can sprawl a little bit.
Several other artists made contributions to various tracks on the album. German mathematician Dr. Thorsten Wörmann contributed to the track "Gemini Syringes", psychedelic rock band MGMT contributed to the song "Worm Mountain", and Karen O (lead singer of the alternative rock trio Yeah Yeah Yeahs) contributed to the songs "I Can Be a Frog" and "Watching the Planets". Karen O's contributions were recorded by Wayne Coyne over the phone.
Background and promotion
On August 13, 2009, the song "See the Leaves" was reviewed and streamed on Pitchfork.com On September 3, 2009, the album was previewed in its entirety on The Fly website, using Wayne Coyne's own track-by-track guide.
On September 17, 2009, the band appeared on The Colbert Report and announced that the album would stream in its entirety on Colbertnation.com until September 21, 2009.
Embryonic was streamed in full on the UK music site Clash Music on October 5, just over a week ahead of its release. It was selected as fourth best album of 2009 by Pitchfork Media.
Critical reception
Embryonic received acclaim from critics upon release, garnering an 81/100 score (indicating "universal acclaim") on Metacritic based on 33 critics. while Paste described the record as "a wonderfully weird parade of sonic delights: an arresting consummation of the Lips' two-and-a-half decade career." Other critics praised the album but were also quick to note its dramatically different sound in comparison to previous releases. Mojo remarked that "(Embryonics) themes may be familiar, but its fine, dazzlingly outlandish music is fresh and utterly fearless." Graeme Thomson in The Observer described the album as a "fragmented, loose, indulgent, occasionally inspired, [and] considerably heavier than their last outing". Stuart Berman in Pitchfork called it a " an unrelentingly paranoid, static-soaked acid-rock epic" and praised the raw directness of the material.
As of 2011, the album has sold 103,000 copies in the United States.
Sound and influence
The style of the tracks on Embryonic differs from the styles of previous albums, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots and At War with the Mystics, and has been reported to be similar to the style of Joy Division, Miles Davis, and John Lennon.
Track listing
Itunes exclusive bonus tracks
Personnel
The Flaming Lips
- Wayne Coyne – lead vocals, guitar, theremin, keyboards, vocoder, mixing, production
- Steven Drozd – guitars, keyboards, drums, bass, backing vocals, lead vocals on "If", mixing, production
- Michael Ivins – bass, keyboards, backing vocals, mixing, production, additional engineering
- Kliph Scurlock – drums, percussion
Additional personnel
- Scott Booker – production
- Dave Fridmann – production, mixing, programming, engineering, mastering
- MGMT – additional singing and playing (track 13)
- Karen O – additional singing, screaming, animal sounds and noises (tracks: 7, 11, 18)
- Thorsten Wörmann – spoken announcements (tracks: 7, 17)
Charts
{| class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders"
|+Chart performance for Embryonic
! Chart (2009)
! Peak
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!scope="row"|Canadian Albums (Nielsen SoundScan)
| style="text-align:center;"|37
|-
|-
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!scope="row"|US Billboard 200
| style="text-align:center;"|8
|}
Embryonic moved 32,000 copies in its first week on US charts.