Alternative Nation: The Fediverse's Alternative and Indie Music Community

God I fucking love this album. The whole thing is perfect, but in particular Do You Realise? is just incredible.

I still can't decide if this, or Soft Bulletin is their best album.

If anyone has the means and a proper setup for it, the surround sound mix of this album is a crazy experience.

That intro track is all you to listen to in order to understand why this album is so highly rated. Damn Cat Stevens for what he did to The Flaming Lips over some generic chords

I was working in the music department at Borders Books & Music when this came out. We were 10 years past the explosion of grunge and while there were some great albums being released, shit just felt like it had gotten stale and bland.

Then The Lips dropped Yoshimi and it blew our minds. It was creative, cohesive, unique, and the songs were well written. We played the shit out of it in the store. Since then, it's been a constant in my life, always flirting with being in my top 10 albums list (most days I'd put it in there).

My family went through a string of loss over the course of a few years and I spent a lot of time with the album. While it's ostensibly a song about a failed relationship, Fight Test came to more generally be a song about overcoming loss for me. It became so closely entwined with death that I get tears in my eyes almost every time I hear it now. Not in a sad way, necessarily, just as a reminder that some people I've loved are gone and it wasn't what any of us had planned, but we go on and try to live our lives the best way we can.

With that part said, the two songs surrounding Do You Realize seem like weak points, but not total stinkers.

It had been a while since I listened to this band so I gave this album a fresh listen earlier this week and the whole thing is great. But I absolutely love the electronic freak out of the title track pt 2.

In the context of the album I interpret it as the robots response to pt 1 of the title track. It's a increbile way to introduce some more experimental sounds and also build up the world around this album.

I remember telling my wife during Flaming Lips at Big Day Out that I want Do You Realise played at my funeral. 20-ish years later I still feel the same.

Great album to introduce children to indie rock

@kvn2 Only thing I would add is that I highly recommend catching them live if you haven’t.

Don't forget to recommend some albums you'd like to discuss for future album club weeks! Reply to this comment with ideas!