![]() ![]() Welcome back, Emperor Zing.Īt Manchester Academy on 22 January. Whether walking over the crowd in his giant plastic ball singing David Bowie’s Space Oddity, donning a strobe-light medallion for The WAND or leading a concerted effort to break the ceiling by screaming “love” ahead of Do You Realize?, Coyne seems reborn, once again dishing out the purest, most potent dose of feelgood psychedelia imaginable. And, of course, Coyne sings Dalek chill-out tune There Should Be Unicorns astride a life-sized prop unicorn, having presumably gone skip-diving at Mariah Carey’s house. On glacial mecha-ballad How?, a crestfallen plea for liberal freedoms that feels all the more hopeless in the face of Donald Trump’s tangerine terror-glare, Coyne sounds as if he’s trapped in one of Coleridge’s pleasure-dome ice caves, while album highlight The Castle resembles a fanfare for fairytale royalty. Songs from their current comedown phase provide amorphous, dream-like counterpoint. The two-hour show includes light-up gongs, psychedelic nudes and gigantic dancing eyeballs beamed in from an alternate universe in which the Residents are playing stadiums.ĭisclaimer: no hallucinogens were abused in the making of this review. For a tender acoustic take on Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots: Pt One, he’s flanked by overgrown aliens and goblins and repeatedly hugs an inflatable sun.Ĭome the mangled Beck-in-a-tumble-dryer electro-rock of What Is the Light?, the forest of dot-matrix strings hanging overhead – let’s call them Rapunzel lights – descends to stage level so that Coyne, wandering within them, looks as if he’s showering in sine waves. Photograph: Simone Joyner/RedfernsĪt the opening sci-fi overture of Race for the Prize, the venue explodes with balloons, confetti cannons and rainbow visuals as Coyne – done out like a Tim Burton-Albert Einstein – throws a huge silver balloon sign reading “FUCK YEAH LONDON” into a crowd peppered with Father Christmases. Listen before you buy it: You can hear all the tracks in their entirety on the Flaming Lips website at double you double you double you dot flaming lips dot com.Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne in London. ![]() ![]() It's a mantle they didn't assume until after the Soft Bulletin exponentially grew their live audience base, so they're still growing in the role.īest tracks on the album: the WAND, Pompeii, Sound of Failure, Free Radicals, and the chorus on It Overtakes Me. becoming strange spacy crusaders for heart, creative elaborate explosions of fun, and hardwork on a regular touring circuit of small venues and big festivals. I think they peaked with the Soft Bulletin, and their songwriting has lost a lot of universality since then. They've always enjoyed getting into the studio and experimenting with sound, and the results are usually rewarding. Pompeii is beautiful and bittersweet, counterpointing the WAND's populist (and frankly mystical) optimism with a song of friendship and love frozen in the face of more powerful natural phenomena.Īll the talk that the Flaming Lips moved in new musical directions for this album is par for the discussion concerning any new Lips album. ![]() The WAND would have made a great opening track, as it most clearly states the war with the mystics case that the album as a whole only sporadically makes. The most notable exception to this comes near the end with two of the albums best tracks, The WAND followed by Pompeii am gotterdammerung. The songs themselves are good, but they flow from one to the next too schizophrenically. The first two songs speak to a "you" about power and radicalism vs fanaticism. Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for The Flaming Lips At War With The Mystics 5. My major complaint with this album isn't the songs but their order. Good heart (as always), Interesting (as always), but. ![]()
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