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The Flaming Lips
At War with the Mystics
Warner Bros.
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Article
written by Bob M
Mar 12, 2006.
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Oklahoma’s own eccentric superstars, The Flaming Lips, have made their 12th full-length album a loud, raucous affair—kind of. After two relatively sedate offerings (1999's The Soft Bulletin and 2002's Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots), At War With The Mystics opens with the bombastic, hand-clapping “The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song,” a hopeless catchy tune that features some serious lyric punches, like “if you could make everybody poor, just so you could be rich, would you do it?/if you could watch everybody work, while you just lay on your back, would you do it?”
Aside from more volume and slightly darker lyrical topics, the album is a heavily layered affair, with tracks and tracks of background vocals, electronic noodling, guitars and sonic fiddling. “The Sound of Failure/It's Dark... is it Always this Dark??” is a 7-minute opus that roams from swinging ’70s pop to Yes-like synch prog, complete with spacy background noise—leading directly into the initially loungy and mellow “My Cosmic Autumn Rebellion (The Inner Life as Blazing Shield of Defiance and Optimism as Celestial Spear of Action),” which gets louder but not significantly less mellow. You’ll note there’s no shortage of song title verbal diarrhea (another one, just for fun: “The Wizard Turns On... The Giant Silver Flashlight and Puts on His Werewolf Moccasins,” a groovy instrumental interlude replete with wah-wah guitar, Jethro Tull-style flute and sound effects straight out of Ummagumma).
“It Overtakes Me/The Stars Are So Big... I Am So Small... Do I Stand a Chance?” (another title that would make Fiona Apple jealous) is another rollicking hand-clap affair with music that’s as funky and dramatic as any Queen tune, but the lyrics are repetitive and ultimately dull—and at just under 7 minutes, the song seems nothing short of an uncontrolled experiment needing a serious edit.
The most pop tune of the entire album seems to be “Mr. Ambulance Driver,” a song seriously lacking in title meat but excelling in songcraft. At a relatively brief 4:21, it’s got punch, grace and real soul. A close second is the single release, “The W.A.N.D. (The Will Always Negates Defeat),” which features, yet again, more hand clapping and more layered background vocals, as well as roaring organs, crunchy guitars and no doubt of the band’s intentions: "We've got the power now, motherfuckers, it's where it belongs."
In what seems to be a bit of an homage to Pink Floyd’s Live at Pompeii, “Pompeii Am Götterdämmerung” is a sprawling sonic belly flop, one that leaves the listener reaching for some munchies. Combining the rhythmic punch of “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun” and the organ work of “Careful with that Axe, Eugene,” this could very well have been a Waters/Gilmour/Wright/Mason construction. Insofar as a Floydian tip-of-the-hat, it’s pretty superb. While there’s no direct evidence that the song is in any way a reference to The Floyd circa 1972, that’s the effect.
Despite the bite and seriousness of “The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song,” as well as a few other dark lyrical elements throughout, the record closes with the cautiously optimistic and upbeat “Goin’ On.” With lyrics like “We hold our breath ‘til the morning comes and at last the sun shines through/but the night’s so hard that is seems impossible, but what else can we do?”, it’s clear that the band knows that despite the shape the world’s in, there’s no choice but to keep goin’ on.
Admittedly, this reviewer must offer full disclosure with this disclaimer: I’ve never been a big, roaring fan of The Flaming Lips. It’s not a sense of dislike, but simply a lack of interest, despite many listenings. As such, this record comes to my ears with little or no overwhelming bias. The old, dreaded Pink Floydian part of my brain very much enjoyed the sonic playfulness, but the rest of my music mind—with only a small space for such prog things—got occasionally bored. It’s a fine record, with a great sound and interesting musical ideas, but the majority of people who will fall over themselves for this album will be the existing fans. Not that this is a bad thing...
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