On their thirteenth studio album, The Flaming Lips expand their mastery of emotion with an unsettling sonic experience. The cover art's blast of existential loneliness sums up The Terror's thesis: you are on your own. And without the light of love, it is awfully dark. Explaining this basic concept, Wayne Coyne said that "we wanted to believe that without love we would disappear, that love, somehow would save us . . . and if there is no love, there would be no life. The Terror is, we know now, that even without love, life goes on . . . we just go on . . . there is no mercy killing." Scary, indeed.
Unlike the free-wheeling and propulsive psychedelia of Embryonic, The Terror is purposefully restrained, and as the industrial acid-trips drone forward, conveying themes of isolation, fear, and bewilderment, the slow builds that never reach catharsis are almost always unnerving. Steven Drozd's oddball arrangements carry the album and are built on his sobering synth work, and only the ocassional guitar squall interrupts the march of his ominous keyboards. Wayne Coyne's accompanying lyrics are stark and declarative, and he sometimes buries his vocals in slight distortions to further alienate his listeners. Coyne takes pleasure in the artistic freedom that comes with being the most adventurous major-label act that has lasted this long in the business.
As with the stunning turns in Embryonic, The Lips follow another strange path with this record. Though the band could make new versions of "Race for the Prize" or "Yoshimi" over and over, holding their festival-ready pop like a comfort blanket, their committment to the emotional honesty in their lives--and by extension, their art--is impressive. By plumbing depths of depression and confusion, they are not necessarily giving up, but merely sharing their deepest fear that the universe may not be on our side. As a result, The Lips dive into another strange cacophony.
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