the black angel's death song

The Flaming Lips' Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (2002).

"I was waiting on a moment/But the moment never came."

The Flaming Lips’ 2002 release Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots has to be one of the nicest and most honest albums in recent years. That might sound strange for a record whose cover makes its science fiction title quite literal, but somewhere behind all of the talk of black belts defeating robots is an emotional core not unlike that which is all too present in John Lennon’s seminal album Plastic Ono Band (1970). Yoshimi opens with “Fight Test,” a lovely track whose childlike sense of the world does not keep it from being achingly beautiful and disarming. Wayne Coyne’s vocals have rarely sounded more wounded than when he sings, “I don’t know where the sun beams end and the star/Light begins it’s all a mystery.” The title song is likewise interested in the melancholy shadings of the world as seen through the eyes of youth; how else could one explain the poignancy that lyrics like “Oh Yoshimi/They don’t believe me/But you won’t let those/Robots defeat me” gain from the Flaming Lips’ treatment? As good as all of these songs are, the greatest track, for me, has always been “Do You Realize??” Over the span of three and a half minutes, Coyne crafts one of the most enchanting evocations of mortality and the wonders of life that I’ve ever heard. Elsewhere, the band plays on, and we swoon.