The FLips and their fellow touring band/roadie crew Stardeath & White Dwarfs gave it’s Christmas gift a little early this year (with the exception of this) in the form of a totally wackass cover treatment to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about it yet, but I can at the least appreciate that the two bands attempted to play to their strengths and make the songs their own– no attempt at matching any of Gibbon’s/Water’s epic guitar solos to be found. Instead they crank on the fuzz, the out-of-place noise sampling, and some Embryonic-esque gloom.
I’ve had Embryonic in my hands for a few months now and I’m almost kind of surprised what a turnaround I did on it. Maybe that’s the mark of a great album; something you don’t entirely understand at first, but something that you repeatedly come back to because something completely inexplicable compels you too. This is especially surprising for a band that’s recently made it’s career out of bombastic first-impressions; first impressions that manage to have supernatural staying power over most popular music. This album is the exact opposite, one that has you asking “what the f—” until that crowning moment where it all just seems to make sense.
This song is concentrated empowerment, and empowerment is always a dish better served with a bunch of stranger hippies, strobe lights and gratuitous smoke. The W.A.N.D, which according to some liner notes rather adorably stands for “The Will Always Negates Defeat!”, is the surest way outside of recreational methamphetamine to get your self completely amped to just do something and succeed.
When Wayne invariably falls into a firepit after fighting a balrog only to return as Wayne Coyne the White, this is the song he’ll use to rally oppressed youth from across the world to create some kind of Stonertopia; toppling nations and triggering spontaneous orgies.
