Best Albums of the Decade – #6

the Flaming Lips – Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (2002)

After the huge, unexpected critical success of 1999’s “The Soft Bulletin”, the Flaming Lips were promoted to the first class of the alternative/pop scene. For a band with 16 years of experience (!) at the time, it must’ve been a strange milestone to reach. What’s even stranger is that 3 years later, the band released “Yoshimi…”, an album that became their first gold-certified release (that was their tenth album!!). With its delusions of grandeur, its original computer-generated atmospherics and its haunting lyrics, “Yoshimi…” strikes with songs that treat of mortality, love, pacifism and melancholy in a strange yet beautiful way.