Embryonic by The Flaming Lips
Embryonic is the twelfth studio album by experimental rock band The Flaming Lips released on October 13, 2009 on Warner Bros. It is the first double album to be released by the band, announced during an interview with the band's frontman Wayne Coyne, 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.
Just when you thought The Flaming Lips couldn't get any weirder, they drop a double album of paranoid psych-rock freakouts interspersed with glimmering moments of Zen. <i>Embryonic</i> balances brutality in the acerbic, lo-fi shrieks and screeches of "Convinced of the Hex" and the chaotic, metallic crunch of "Worm Mountain" (featuring MGMT) with pure shots of lucidity in the bass-heavy, soft-pop sparkler "Gemini Syringes”. "Silver Trembling Hands" is the best of both worlds, throbbing with terror before collapsing into a soothing psych-pop dream.
