Flaming Lips records always begin with a puff of fairy-dust and a bang. Take the gradual psychedelic bell-ringing delight ‘Abandoned Hospital Ship’ from ‘Clouds Taste Metallic’, the bouncy-rubber robotics of ‘Flight Test’ from ‘Yoshimi…’ and of course the unrivalled ‘Race For The Prize’ from their definitive ‘Soft Bulletin’. But even by those proven standards it feels like they’ve glued their goggles on and taken a calf-crunching run up this time.
The ecstatic ‘The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song’ is a teetering showcase, rebounding purposefully from clipped Far-Eastern doo-wop harmony overload to foundation-rattling glam drumming, universal campfire guitar sprinkles, space-bass and an anthemic, easy-as-ABC sing-along chorus worth kidnapping a kids choir for. It’s their breakthrough ‘She Don’t Use Jelly’ playing zero-gravity tennis on the moon with a steroid-baked serve. And then not just to leave it at that, but to segue into ‘Free Radicals’, the most monstrously solid Prince-aping stuttered funk celebration, with less of a hook and more a pimped-up 20 tonne mechanical crane, is like testing your capacity for joy. We challenge you not to listen to the first 2 tracks and feel just a little bit reborn.
The Oklahoman oddities continue to have an unmatched effect over your emotions, sending transmissions back from a dimension that could only exist inside an addled imagination. That’s no surprise, it’s what they do. But after the more muted textures of ‘Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots’ – which had, lest we forget, followed the almost unbearably timeless and magical ‘Soft Bulletin’ – there was some speculation that they may have worn the top gear down, reducing their overall scope in the process. Not so. This album is proof that not only are there jackpot combinations left on their figurative fruit-machine, but that they can throw in a fortune cookie or two too.
Their continuing fixation with war imagery in the titles sits at stark odds with their playful, 100% proof lust for life and colour, and the concluding impression that everything’s going to be okay. Because it probably won’t be, and behind those fuzzy panda eyes it might surprise you to know that they know that too. This album comes laden with message, from the roundtable moral discussions of ‘The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song’ stashed beneath the Zebedee on a trampet exterior (“If you knew all the answers and could give it to the masses, would you do it? No no no. Are you crazy!?”), to loaded couplets scattered evenly throughout the album; “Time after time those fanatical minds try to rule the world” (‘The W.A.N.D.’), “They’ll destroy you with their lies” (‘Cosmic Autumn Rebellion’), “Every time you state your case/The more I want to punch your face” (an unusually direct outburst in ‘Haven’t Got A Clue’, naturally delivered with a spoonful of sugar).
No matter how big, small or crushing the subject matter may be in each of those cases, that they counter with an everlasting burst of radiance can’t help but fill you with a similar hope. It’s the sort of thing that makes listening to a Faming Lips record like experiencing an out-of-body experience, it’s their signature quality. The album levels off to cruising altitude after the initial whizz-bang and grazes contemplatively through psychedelic constellations. It’s nothing that will change your life, but it makes you think about it, which is almost better. And they still have tricks to pull before we land. Take the looping Beck-esque funk of ‘It Overtakes Me’, and the brilliant tumbling Disney vs. Flash Gordon warp factor ‘Pompeii Am Götterdammerung’.
It finds them at their eclectic scattergun best and reminds you that to love The Flaming Lips is to love music. And more pointedly that to love The Flaming Lips is to love life itself. Wonderful.