3. Embryonic / The Flaming Lips

Remember when you found that dusty copy of Dark Side of the Moon in your old man's closet and realized that he might have been pretty cool after all? Well, fifteen years from now when your son is listening to bizarre techno-punk and finds Embryonic in the back of your collection, he will share the same feelings. His old man listened to some pretty cool music.

Yes, with Embryonic The Flaming Lips made perhaps the most left-turn album of their left-turn career. Yes, there are songs called "Aquarius Sabotage," "Gemini Syringes," "Sagittarious Silver Announcment," and "Virgo Self-Esteem Broadcast." Yes, the album cover should simultaneously freak you out and freak you out. And yes, the music is striking.

Embryonic is The Flaming Lips darkest record to date, a strange amalgamation of the band's early psyche-rock and more recent Yoshimi ponderousness. The music is played with absolute abandonment and spins out of the studio, live and intense, almost out of control. Yet the incredible production values are able to rein in the songs despite the overwhelming and free-wheeling approach. The end result is an utterly fearless and fresh sonic dissonance that leaps past any of the band's creative peers. Twenty-five years into musicmaking, bands are not supposed to make something this vibrant and different, both compared to their previous work and peers. Indeed, listeners cannot overstate how surprising the record sounds from a band that many believed could (and would) never do surprising again. With Embryonic, The Flaming Lips have cemented their status as one of the most important bands of the past twenty years, and one of the most enjoyable bands of all time.