When all is said and done, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots was a great record, especially for an album that wasn't exactly loved by everybody when it first hit the file-trading circuit. Admired and enjoyed? Sure, but mostly, mixed or lukewarm reactions to the record slowly grew into devotion. It took me a lot of listens before Yoshimi's silly, sometimes childlike songs revealed themselves as a heartbreaking meditations on life and death. Not to tug your heartstrings, but I lost a loved one around the time I bought this album; now I can't hear it without getting a little choked up. How many modern artists could give us such a personal take on accepting mortality, and then throw balloons all over it?
Certainly not Cat Stevens, whose weepy, pedantic "Father and Son" provided the melody for "Fight Test"-- one of the Lips' greatest songs, and the centerpiece of this post-Yoshimi EP. Granted, the band admits to cribbing the tune, and yes, the lyrics are disarmingly simple; read literally, the song is just about a couple guys fighting over a girl. But saying this is "just" a pop song is like saying a classic Roman arch is a pile of stone with a slit up the middle. "Fight Test" is majestically architected. It speaks so purely about an idea-- steeling yourself up for something you don't want to face-- that it can resonate with anyone, especially as Wayne Coyne's empathic vocals ride Dave Fridmann's finest flying saucer production and bold orchestration.
That's the only song on the Fight Test EP that isn't new; it's followed by six live and rare tracks-- including a set of cover songs recorded for radio sessions, selected from the promo-only offering Yoshimi Wins! Unfortunately, the novelty factor of hearing the Lips tackle other people's pop hits counts for more than what they do to them. It's as if Wayne told the guys, "Hey, why don't you go hose out the rabbit suits? I'm gonna stay here and knock out these arrangements." We start with Kylie Minogue's disco-tech smash "Can't Get You Out of My Head", which is slowed to a dirge and buried under maudlin organ. It's an effective way to bring out the desperation in the lyrics, but I'd rather hear the Lips turn up the beat and knock this track on its ass. Their performance of Beck's "The Golden Age", meanwhile, is as solid but submissive as you'd expect from, well, Beck's backing band.
Then you have Radiohead's "Knives Out", an interesting band for the Lips to set themselves against. In these troubled times, a lot of rock fans are sitting around waiting for some band to hand over the perfect protest song, one short ditty that could somehow encapsulate everything that's wrong with the world today. But sometimes we forget the few bands-- including Radiohead and The Flaming Lips-- who have given us a more nuanced response to the state of the world (or at least to the mental state of their fans). And while Radiohead treads on gloomier themes, the Lips take the opposite tact of emboldening the individual: Wayne Coyne's like your coach, and the game is to not let your head detonate when you turn on the news. So, what does this clash of important bands yield? Sadly, not much-- the Lips' fuzziness and squawking guitar are, at best, a very weird substitute for Radiohead's tense, insistent rhythms.
After the covers comes the only other Yoshimi track, "Do You Realize??", which has been remixed and rendered club-friendly by DJ-of-the-moment-five-minutes-ago Scott Hardkiss (really, it could as easily have been John Digweed, Timo Maas, or Danny Tenaglia). Hardkiss's treatment makes the band's "happy death song" longer and brighter, but somehow, the lyrics lose their punch without the over-the-top production of the original. And "The Strange Design of Conscience"-- one of two brand-new tracks-- almost reaches Yoshimi-level meditations, but is too wordy and relies too much on blips and bloops than broad strokes or sharp hooks.
Fortunately, the final track fares far better than the rest of the entire disc (title track excepted): "Thank You Jack White (For the Fiber-Optic Jesus That You Gave Me)" is a little ditty that recounts the time they were playing in Detroit, and The White Stripes frontman came backstage to give them a present. [Note to Ryan: Tell the newswire they can relax-- we just made our Jack White reference quota for today.] While on the surface it seems like a throwaway track, the lyrics are funnier, the melody catchier and the entire song better thought-out than it needed to be. The songwriting, in fact, hearkens back to a much earlier Flaming Lips period-- the oft-glazed-over Transmissions from the Satellite Heart era, back when the band was more concerned with goofy, feelgood pop songs than beautiful, grandiose statements.
Still, I think I speak for most fans when I wonder why Warner opted for this track selection over an official release for all the great songs recorded during the Yoshimi sessions that didn't make the album. "Up Above the Daily Hum", "Funeral in My Head", the Japanese version of the title track, and all the others are generally accepted to be on par with any of the album's eleven existing cuts. They may be available on import singles, but since this will likely be the only Yoshimi companion piece to receive a U.S. release, it would be nice if they'd issued them all together in one place, or even expanded this disc to a mini-LP to make room for them.
Coasting mainly on novelty tunes, this EP isn't exactly essential listening. But then again, if the Lips only stuck to what's essential, they'd have a much cheaper stage show and a much less giddy fanbase. Anyone who wants to keep the Yoshimi party rolling will enjoy it. And as a bonus, there's a multimedia portion with the (kind of dull, I'm afraid) "Fight Test" video, and a five-minute trailer for the band's long-awaited Christmas on Mars film. Will the film couple its silliness with the rigor of their best work, or will it, like this disc, turn out to be a fans-only vanity project? To compare them once again to their peers, at least their flick'll be a hell of a lot more fun than Radiohead's or Wilco's. Bring on the alien Santa Claus autopsy!
