![]() ![]() “What can an eighteen-year-old possibly care about a wrinkled-up old man with a pencil-thin mustache hunched over a keyboard?” he asks incredulously. Though the Lips will be opening for Dylan this summer, Coyne, perhaps inspired by hecklers of gigs past, mentions a backstage conversation he once had with a young Dylan fan. I would love it if he was a freak.”)īackstage before the show, talk turns to Bob Dylan, who was famously heckled during a 1966 U.K. in fact, you’re fanatical” – Coyne snorts and says, “No! I’d tell you if it was. (Asked if the song “Free Radicals,” on Mystics, is about Beck, who is a Scientologist – the chorus goes, “You think you’re radical. In 2004, during an interview with Esquire, he expressed his disappointment in touring with Beck, describing the singer as an image-obsessed diva. Coyne, especially, seems to take a certain glee in talking shit. In a world – show business – in which performers tend to speak as cautiously as if they’re running for a city council seat, the members of the Flaming Lips are refreshingly blunt. The joke: “What do coffee and Eric Clapton have in common?” ![]() Most recently, the first in a series of Cream reunion shows took place here, which prompts a joke from Lips multi-instrumentalist Steven Drozd. The stately concert venue remains legendary in rock circles. We are at London’s Royal Albert Hall, where the band is preparing to play a sold-out show to celebrate the release of its album At War With the Mystics. I will end up spending four days with Coyne (on two continents), and every time we meet he is wearing the same suit, with the bow tie unfastened in precisely the same manner. This afternoon, Coyne’s suit is white with blue pinstripes, matched with a vest and an untied bow tie. This, combined with his unruly haircut and penchant for formally tailored three-piece suits, gives him the air of an Old West undertaker, or perhaps a flimflam man running an elaborate con. Now in his midforties, Coyne has allowed a generous amount of gray to creep into his scruffy beard and sideburns. But that’s the trouble with all of these psychedelic drugs: too much of a commitment and not enough payback.” “I would still take LSD if it could be for an hour. Truly a sonic treat from one of the most interesting rock bands around, both musically and lyrically.“I would enjoy bits of a trip, but it would just be too long for me,” Coyne continues. A special mention must go to the prog rock track, 'Pompeii Am Götterdämmerung', which is a slow, brooding guitar and drum study of the famous story, with elongated lava flows of guitar and eruptions of crashing cymbals. The second half of the album shows the breadth of styles the Flaming Lips can nod their instruments to, with sounds of guitar pedals, funky clap-along tempos and lounge, piano-led rhythms. This album's closer, 'Goin' On', is another upbeat number that manages to combine gushing backing vocals with groovy, keyboard-led tones and a tale of persevering to overcome adversity. Starting with summery bird sounds and leading with a soaring fuzzy riff and joyous chorus, the song springs from the same well as 'Race For The Prize' and 'Do You Realize?' among others from the band's last two albums. Lyrically, the song is a lament on suicide that is overtly critical of the pop world’s smash hit starlets.įor fans of the resolutely optimistic streak of The Flaming Lips' music that was most in evidence on the band’s last outing, 'Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots', 'My Cosmic Autumn Rebellion' is undoubtedly this album's standout track. ![]() 'The Sound Of Failure/It's Dark.Is It Always This Dark?' has a different sonic character to the rest of the album, with piano and woodwind echoes recalling the moonlit tones of the band's first major success, 'The Soft Bulletin'. (that's Will Always Negates Defeat) seems like an obvious reference to another four-letter acronym for Weapons Of Mass Destruction.Įlsewhere on 'At War With the Mystics', other themes can be detected. While it is debatable to which minds he is addressing, Wayne Coyne's magical W.A.N.D. It is followed by 'Free Radicals', an arresting staccato track, which its subtitle describes as the Christmas skeleton pleading with a suicide bomber.Īnother track, 'The W.A.N.D.', criticises fanatical minds that seek to rule the world. Beginning with a chorus of 'yeahs' and an anguished falsetto that tries the ear's patience, opening track 'The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song' develops into a cautionary pondering on the corrupting nature of power. Like many other US bands in recent times that did not start out with any particular campaigning bent, The Flaming Lips have just gotten political.
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