'The Soft Bulletin' from 1999 marked a dramatic change in fortunes for The Flaming Lips. Suddenly their quirky concept albums and novelty records were forgotten in favour of a glorious evocation of dreampop. 'Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots' reaffirms and builds on that ground work. Quite surprisingly, the verse to 'Fight Test' recalls the melody of 'Father And Son' a hit for Boyzone in the mid-90s but it's in far safer hands here. Everything about this production is bright; from the punchy, fleshed-out drumming to the resonant guitar lines (just listen to the finale 'Approaching Pavonis Mons By Balloon' for evidence) and best of all, Wayne Coyne's falsetto. It now appears much more relaxed and confident instead of the reedy Neil Young impersonation of old. This new strength enables 'One More Robot', 'Ego Tripping At The Gates Of Hell' and 'All We Have Is Now' to sound magical and powerful but not in an oppresive way. Elsehwere they do their usual heartbursting melodies culminating in 'Do You Realize??' whose lyric of 'Do you realize, you have such a beautiful face?' avoids all notions of crassness through its sheer tunefulness. In fact the whole album successfully encapsulates exactly how the fantasy world of a Japanese video game character should sound like.