I (Don't) Believe I Can FlyLo

I consider myself to be a chap of reasonable intelligence. I took a deeper understanding away from the metaphors of Baraka (“duuuude, humans are totally just like battery hens!”). I've read Eckhart Tolle, and even understood (most of) it the second time round. I support the Canberra Raiders, the most philosophical of all the football teams. And, sometimes, I even think that maybe – just maybe – same sex marriage and asylum seekers won't tear apart the fabric of Australian society as we know it. Contentious stuff, I know.

But no matter how hard I try – and as a woman who eventually made a shiteload of cash writing songs for Pink once screeched, “oh my God do I try” – I cannot for the life of me wrap my head around the musical offerings of Flying Lotus. At last, the heavy burden of my shame has been lifted.

My general ambivalence to his particular brand of mad science emerged fully formed when his Reset EP landed in my pigeonhole at Time Off HQ in early 2008. I've never been one to worship blindly at the altar of all things Warp Records, but seeing that imprint on the sleeve sent this one straight to the top of the listening pile.

The ensuing review pretty much sums up my thoughts four years and three albums later – “like a collection of musical sketches”, “floating along without much direction”, and “never quite connects like you think it could”. (In the same issue, I also described a track by The Aston Shuffle as “disposable drivel”. Sorry about that guys. To flip a well-worn phrase: opinions are like aresholes, and I am one.)

Fast forward to 2010, and when my reviewer dropped the 'I' word in his gushing appraisal of Cosmogramma for 3D World, I just rolled my eyes and let it through. Hey, I thought Teenage Dream was Important, so to each their own, right?

And here we are in 2012, with music critics around the world busily poring over their thesaurus looking for new and more extravagant superlatives to lavish the one like FlyLo with when Until The Quiet Comes (Warp/Inertia) drops on Friday 28 September. And here I am, giving it a run for a fifth time, and still finding it to be the musical equivalent of a Terrence Malick film: ambitious, immaculately produced, occasionally accessible, but generally pretty much impenetrable.

Don't get me wrong, the dude clearly has something special going on inside that mind of his, and I love me some self-indulgent piffle as much as the next chinstroker – my record collection has special places reserved for King Crimson, Mahavishnu Orchestra, and Yes. Hell, I've sat through all of Tales From Topographic Oceans more than once, and for a brief period in 1996 thought that Jethro Tull's Thick As A Brick was the most amazing thing I'd ever heard. (It was a particularly good year for weed, if memory serves).

I don't necessarily like Until The Quiet Comes, and I definitely don't hate it, but if you asked me to pick one of its tunes out of a line-up I'd have a better chance of identifying Keyser Söze. Yes, his sound is identifiably his own, but for me there's a disconnect that ensures FlyLo's music just passes directly through my ears without lodging anywhere inside. Yet even as I write this, I'm listening to the space age synths of The Nightcaller and thinking “yeah, this really is some next level cosmic shit”.

Still, I expect my view to be in the minority. Much like regular collaborator Thom Yorke and his buddies from Radiohead, FlyLo has reached that stage where critics are almost obliged to fap all over his musical output for fear of looking out of touch with their peers. I mean, The King Of Limbs? Really guys? When bands start trolling the world with album releases, you know something's not quite right. Yes Snoop Lion, I'm onto you as well.

Coincidentally, Stephanie Zacharek over at The AV Club has raised similar concerns about the critical reception to Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master, like to admit “I just don't get it maaan” makes you an inferior being. 

But I'm not too proud to admit that I don't get FlyLo. And opinions are like aresholes, so feel free to tear me a new one.