Listen Hear

The Flaming Lips
"Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots"
(Warner Bros.)

Talk about difficult follow-ups. The Flaming Lips' 1999 release "The Soft Bulletin" inspired a collective critical spasm comparable only to the thesaurus-driven backflips caused by the latest Wilco album. For the Lips, it represented a third (fourth?) bout with overnight success in an almost 20-year career.

It turns out that "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots" is an album as utterly out of sorts with the Flaming Lips' history as "The Soft Bulletin" was with the albums that preceded it. In fact, reconciling the sound on "Yoshimi" with the sound of any Flaming Lips album is nearly impossible. (Even Wayne Coyne's vocal warblings -- long an identifiable mark of the Lips' music -- are nearly unrecognizable here.) Though it shares some of "The Soft Bulletin's" lush airiness, "Yoshimi" exists in an entirely different space.

There is not one rock song here, nor the themes that have been strewn across the Lips' 11 or so full-length records. No songs about bugs. No songs about Jesus. No ear-splitting youthful distortion. In fact, precious few of the hooks that made the dense beauty of "The Soft Bulletin" so accessible are present. "Yoshimi" is the sound of pop effluvia. The leftovers. The sounds that are stuck in the rear surround-sound speakers; the left channel Mellotron in a Beatles outtake; the bass line you hear in the shower; the drum machine sound that Sly Stone used on "Fresh." Leftovers. Imagine an entire album of that, but dressed with irresistible melodies and an inescapable, undefined poppiness.

Even the single "Do You Realize?" is utterly insubstantial, never taking the properly full-bodied form that a pop song is supposed to take. Yet it, like the rest of "Yoshimi," is completely engaged and, well, complete. A song like "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Pt. 2" sounds like a band covering the French duo Air rockin' out in outer space, while "Are You a Hypnotist?" is founded upon what sounds like a warped church organ record. In other words there are few points of reference here, other than the fact that what you hear sounds right, but not correct.

As rock 'n' roll wears itself out, "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots" is the sound of valiant ragpickers threading the scraps together with wispy pop glue, handing up a gentle thing of vaguely identifiable pieces and parts; something simultaneously familiar and foreign, both beautiful and completely odd. Suffering neither from irony nor from overwrought context, "Yoshimi" is a record that can -- and must -- live outside of its time and place.

-- Jason Ferguson

Marianne Faithfull
"Kissin' Time"
(Virgin)

Let's face it: A lot of guys have a long-standing obsession about the experienced older woman, and sexy though they were, neither Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft or Kathleen Turner) had anything on Marianne Faithfull. Yeah, sure, of course -- she is an unassailably cool embodiment of rock history, a living link to the Swinging London of the mid-'60s ("As Tears Go By"!), the hedonistic decadence of the early '70s ("Sister Morphine"!) and the energizing, angry punk from later in that decade ("Broken English"!). And unlike the Rolling Stones, she's done very little in subsequent years to dishonor that proud legacy.

Still, I suspect that the reasons some of the leading talents of Generation X were so ready, willing and eager to assist on Faithfull's newest is that they were anxious to ask her about that legendary Mars bar; they just couldn't say no when she called, and they all had a bit of a crush. The strongest contributions on this, her best album since 1981's "Dangerous Acquaintances," come courtesy of Beck and former Smashing Pumpkin Billy Corgan (who guest on and co-write three and two of the 10 tracks, respectively), and Jarvis Cocker of Pulp and Damon Albarn of Blur, who both indulge their long-standing fascinations with Mod London by giving its most famed femme fatale one potent track each.

Going back to the Stones, one of Faithfull's biggest talents has been the ability to choose appropriate collaborators, and to seduce/inspire them into giving her their very best. But placing too much emphasis on the hired help shortchanges her biggest assets: her distinctive rasp (the sound of a dozen cigarettes inhaled before breakfast) and the piercing wit of those literary, licentious lyrics. The opening "Sex With Strangers" (one of the Beck tracks) is a delightfully creepy electronic homage to some very unsafe sexual activities; "Song for Nico" is a touching homage to another infamously drug-plagued '60s sex goddess who didn't have the survival gene that Faithfull seems blessed with, and "Sliding Through Life on Charm" is the sort of sassy and erudite confessional that Ray Davies gave up writing a decade and a half ago, as well as an honest and open-eyed confession about her modus operandi.

When David Bowie snares the likes of Dave Grohl and Moby to help boost his hipster cred, it plays like the shallow posing that it is. It's testament to the strength of Faithfull's considerable charisma and endearing croak that she's never overshadowed by the male musicians in her life. They simply prostrate themselves at her feet and do the dominating diva's bidding, and all of us reap the rewards.

-- Jim DeRogatis