Highly listenable, its an interesting take on prog-rock classics like 21st Century Schizoid Man, adding the Lips patented fuzzy squawks and reverbed squeaks to songs only the geekiest of us know by heart.
That said, Ghosts is also a maddeningly frustrating disc for fans desperately wanting a return to the brilliant, pop-psych form of The Soft Bulletin and Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, where honest-to-goodness symphonies of emotion and meticulously crafted treaties of humanity beautifully almost impossibly merged into one cohesive, coherent, classic album.
With Ghosts, its becoming more obvious that Wayne Coyne and fwends (and by fwends, I mean four other bands that do most of the heavy lifting here) dont seem interested in making traditional music as much as they just want to hit record and blast out noise-drenched sound collages with no point.
And thats fine, I suppose. But its also important to realize that its quickly getting old and less adorably quirky.
Ghosts is not the metal-machine mess of Embryonic or Heady Fwends, but it still feels like tossed-off busy work an overblown novelty from a band with too many fingers in too many pies, too many of which are not thoroughly baked.
I eagerly await their next full album, The Terror. We cant give up hope just yet. And if the Lips have done one thing, its providing fans with hope. Thats why we keep coming back. Louis Fowler
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