To Dream What You Dream

The Flaming Lips “The Sparrow Looks Up At The Machine”

At about 2:34 in “The Sparrow Looks Up At The Machine,” you can hear my favorite bit of sonic detail in any song that I have encountered in recent months. Though I am open to the possibility that it could be some kind of synthesizer, it is very clearly the sound of cell phone interference. I know that distinct sound mainly from being in my friend’s car — it’s the noise made when signals from his iPhone disrupt the music on the stereo. It’s a very evocative thing to hear, in and out of context. It’s like a sudden headache made audible, and it imposes on you like an unwanted guest. It’s mundane, but also sort of otherworldly, and I’m sure that if you were to look at a visualization of the sound waves, it would appear unusually jagged yet boxy.

Like the rest of the songs on Embryonic, “The Sparrow Looks Up At The Machine” seems as if it were designed to simulate a bad trip, or an otherwise deeply uncomfortable state of being. The bass looms especially large, lurching along at a frequency that pulls up memories of nausea and cramping. The beats mostly stomp and crush, as if the drums were just the feet of some gigantic monster. Bits of treble fire off, like tiny synaptic lasers in a sci-fi gun battle somewhere deep in the brain. This may all seem unlistenable in print, but the songs themselves are marvels of paranoid psychedelia, and even the most overbearingly grim compositions have a cool, calm center and elements of beauty amid the darkness and murk. It’s ugly and even a bit depressing, but The Flaming Lips have created a fantastically vivid musical nightmare.

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