I have been wallowing around in the world of independent publishing for a long time. I started my first magazine aged 10, and did various others over the years, but have been doing it non-stop now ever since 1987.But I have been in love with music since 1970 when at the age of eleven I found that the thundering riff on a Deep Purple record took me places that I had never been before, and realised that my parents' dismissal of them all as "long-haired twits" probably wasn't either kind or true.
Ever since 1987 I have ended each year with my top ten favourite albums of the year, and I have to admit that this year I have been beginning to worry, because there have been very few records with which I have engaged, and none that have actually enthused me to the extent of being able to say that this is a GREAT or even a CLASSIC record. I was beginning to worry that I was just too old, that at the age of fifty I had left contemporary music behind, and was doomed to become one of those old gits who hang out on Friends Reunited moaning that modern music hasn't got any tunes.
That is, until now. The Flaming Lips (yes Lizzy, it is a peculiar name for a band) have just released a gloriously sprawling double album called Embryonic. I have always liked the band for their skewed take on pop/rock but now they have produced something completely different from their usual ouvre. And bloody hell, it's good.
It sounds like the John Lennon of Walls and Bridges playing with Kid A era Radiohead, with echoes of Rick Wright and even Miles Davis chucked in for good measure. But yes, there are still tunes. For some reason it reminds me stylistically of Julian Cope's equally sprawling Peggy Suicide but for the life of me I cannot explain why, except that they are both double albums and both surprisingly experimental considering what came immediately before.
The best thing I have heard for ages. Honest!
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