The Flaming Lips

The Flaming Lips
At War With the Mystics
(2006)

Rating: 6.2

It is impossible not to be charmed by the Galactic antics of The Flaming Lips. Car radio symphonies, homemade science fiction movies about Christmas on Mars and world-conquering tours populated by daffy, blood soaked animals; their's is a boundlessly enthusiastic approach to engaging an audience. If The Flaming Lips were a cult and Wayne Coyne demanded a collective suicide in Space, you'd have to battle through bunny-costumed crowds to get onto the shuttle.

I've been lucky enough to catch them twice in concert over the last few years and each occasion defied the other in terms of crowd participation and onstage hilarity. You know you're at a Flaming Lips concert when 40,000 beaming fans, punch the air and sing: "Everyone You Know, Someday, Will Die".

There was only one real way for them to go after scaling those giddy heights. The band, to their credit, are seeking out a new direction and the album adopts a more terestrial approach in its delivery. There are no spectral melodies. No childish sense of wonder. Its a huge disappointment. Even repeated listening on Alex Conway's (Leinster Road, Rathmines) pirate copy of the album over the last week has not yielded any hidden qualities.

Its hard to fathom such an unprecedented loss of form in the bands career. My suspicion is that Joe Meek grew tired of Wayne Coyne stealing his M.O. and decided to engage in a little bit of mind-gangsterism. But even discounting Joe's intervention, the album seems to be dominated by what can only be called Bad Ideas. From the Prince-being-Political schtick of Free Radicals to the uninspiring samples that litter almost every song, the album doesn't seem to have been conducted with any enthusiasm. Its hard to see how the appalling Yeah Yeah Yeah song was ever a good idea.

The best I can say of the album is that Pompeii Am Gotterdamnerung manages a decent fist at Space-krautrock. The throbbing bass that drives the song is one of the few elements that I can actually identify as being enjoyable on the album. Vein of Stars starts out with a sweetly unhinged vocal melody but by the time it comes back around towards the end of the song, there is the sinking feeling that the album is fresh out of ideas.

There is nothing here to stoke the imagination of ravenously expectant Flaming Lips fans. The change of direction is understandable if a little misjudged. Actually, make that completely misjudged. It seems like the lights on Wayne's space ship have dimmed and his only company is a radio channel that plays inoffensive, drive-friendly psychedelic rock.