i'm not exactly a flaming lips fan. i think the inconsistency of the discography is a pretty widely held view. even the records that are nearly universally acclaimed tend to hit me the wrong way; i'll acknowledge that most of the discs are well produced, even if the writing often veers into bad taste, but even the best of it just doesn't really push my "excite" buttons. embryonic, though, is a different story. i'd argue that it really towers above the rest of the discography, and even that it's one of the best records released so far this century.
i suppose that, musically, it's significantly darker than anything else they've done, which intersects with the often dire subject matter. it really hit me at exactly the right point, as i was coming to a set of conclusions regarding what i now refer to as "the futility of existence". i've more or less been an atheist since i was born, and have never really wavered in it. but it's a step in abstraction and maturity to actually come to terms with it, with the finiteness of existence and what the best way to approach it is.
unfortunately, the dominant philosophical approach to this over the last century or two has been to try and neutralize it. to make up stories in order to find ways to hold to a set of ideals that are more or less delusions. the left and right take different approaches, but they agree on this fundamental point: the masses cannot understand that existence is meaningless. they must be convinced otherwise, or society will collapse.
but, this is not sustainable. the truth cannot be unlearned. we need revolutionary politics that break through this line of abstraction and come out to a maturation point on the other side of it. the world we live in must fall; it's a question of understanding how to get beyond this. the longer we lie to ourselves in pretending that we can uphold the delusions, the more disastrous the fall will be in the end.