They were always going to have to pull something sizable, nay startlingly immense, out of the laundry basket to make this still-preposterous proposition plausible, as far down the line as a second full-length album. ‘White robes, a roll-call as long as Gulliver’s left leg and pompous multi-instrumental pop’ observed we over the past couple of years. “Novelty!” shrieked some of the world, failing to see past the end of its stubby nose. Of course such a fate often befalls anything which isn’t the same, ‘tis the dough from which bigotry rises in more sensitive situations. And you couldn’t be unkind to a lovely man wrapped up in a fresh smock with a happy smile and hippie hair, could you? It’s true that for an album which drew heavily on the Flaming Lips’ more recent forays into soaring psychedelia, ‘The Beginning Stages Of…’ didn’t have anything like the same depth or range. But it made up for that by mapping out their one corner in such bright, naively honest detail.
That album’s real strength lay in its amorphous qualities, the anonymous, poetic way in which it all (strings, wind, heavenly choral sections, harp, other) met and consummated, moments forming almost by accident it seemed. That could also be partly attributed to the fact it was originally recorded as a prospective demo, many involved still strangers to one another. Things are naturally very different this time, as they needed to be. On first impressions the absence of those familiar comforts may make it seem otherwise, each sub-regiment stage-directed with eccentric (and, you imagine, pricier) precision, but comfort blankets have been replaced by a vast landscape sealed by warm blue skies. It soon becomes apparent that this is the record they were supposed to make. Sections 11-20, ten big-hearted, pulsing orchestral pop tunes, atom-splittingly intense with not a directional thought spared.
His voice still croaks with evangelic modesty, like David Bowie and Wayne Coyne born again in a shared moment, still mulling the same matters – sun, happy days, more sun, solidarity, inner strength and another fierce burst of sunshine for luck. It’s a limited cache, but one you can’t turn against him, it’s so endearingly pure and untainted. Changing tack would only hint at a faltering resolve, and we’re not reminded about some idealisms often enough anyway. ‘Hold Me Now’ and ‘Everything Starts At The Seam’ are agile bounce-alongs, like Ben Folds coming to terms with a wider girth and a couple of extra inches, while ‘Two Thousand Places’ and the exhausting 10 minute ‘When The Fool Becomes A King’ are exactly the sort of behaviour you’d demand from a 27-piece Texan pop-orchestra. Don’t get the impression it’s all heavy handed, ringing bravado though, there are shades and gradients, none more absorbing than the beautiful tip-toeing ‘One Man Show’ and gradually swelling title track, maybe finding what Jason Pierce was looking for on Spiritualized’s ‘Let It Come Down’. They pulled it out the basket then, but even if they hadn’t they’d have made you believe they had.