Now Playing: 'Free Radicals' from At War With The Mystics by The Flaming Lips

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This is Part Three of The Flaming Lips Discography. For Part One, click here. For Part Two, click here.

By the time the Flaming Lips reached that point where they were able to celebrate '20 Years of Weird,' the band had ramped off into other creative directions entirely. By 2006, the band was well and truly comfortable; they had a firm audience base, steady and high-profile touring when they chose, and had cultivated a respected name and position in pop. Not content to rest on laurels however, the band (and particularly Wayne Coyne) took the opportunity to use that position and develop all-new outlets; feature films (made by the band - not so much about them), documentaries, unique performance venues and still other ideas that were ripening for development became the Flaming Lips playthings and the band relished in them as they've continued to thrive. At the same time, because rock n' roll had already become somewhat boring for the band several years before, the Flaming Lips continued to push and stretch their ideas before finally rocketing into space. 2009's Embryonic saw the band tread further from pop and rock orthodoxy than they ever have before and actually begin to explore the negative space in music; something that had only ever been brushed upon by other bands before. It remains a wild and brave new world for the Flaming Lips as they peer down the barrel of another decade and, at this point, all bets are truly off on where the future might find them but, at this point, they can rest assured that they'll always have a healthy crew of passengers along for the ride.

20 Years Of Weird: Flaming Lips 1986—2006
(Warner Brothers, 2006)

After the combined power of The Soft Bulletin and Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots finally sunk in, The Flaming Lips found themselves with a lot of explaining to do. The band's most recent (at that time) studio releases had broken the band onto the pop culture consciousness at a staggering scale, and because the band was no less weird and very honest about the fact that they didn't simply fall out of the sky to support The Soft Bulletin, recently won fans wanted to know about it all; where the band had come from, how they came to be, why they were so “weird,” who had passed through the band's ranks, why they left, what Wayne Coyne's shoe size is, what the deal with duct tape is—they wanted to know everything and (to paraphrase Brave New World) they wanted to hear it straight from the horse's mouth.

Anyone that has ever tried to do it can tell you that telling the same story over and over can be incredibly daunting, so the band and director Brad Beesley began compiling and shooting footage for a documentary film that would be entitled The Fearless Freaks. The film was well-received when it first premiered at the South by Southwest Film Festival in 2005 (it remains highly regarded), and to make sure that everyone had something to commemorate the event, attendees to the movie were given a free compilation disc of Flaming Lips songs.

As Wayne Coyne can attest, the whole thing was very well-received; people loved the comp, and as the singer admits in the opening spiel of 20 Years Of Weird, the band felt a little guilty that the copies they had ran out. When the film was being prepped for a DVD release, it seemed like the perfect time to re-create the accompanying compilation for formal release too—why should anyone miss out?

20 Years Of Weird is an updated version of that comp that was given out at SXSW—for the most part. Collecting live tracks from all different points in the band's career (from “With You” originally recorded at a show in Boston, Mass. Circa 1986, while “The Observer” was recorded live in London in 2006), the compilation is a curious little beast if only because—compiled by the band itself—it's an interesting study in what memories and moments the members of The Flaming Lips hold dear.

It's curious, for example, how there appears to be a seven-year void in the proceedings. Without warning, after a thoroughly discombobulated and noisy (but not in an ear-bleeding sort of way) performance of “When You Smile” culled from a show in 1996 ends and the prototype for Zaireeka, “Sleeping On The Roof” fades out, the proceedings suddenly leap to 2003.

What happened in between? Lots, but none of it is included here. Does that matter? It depends on how you look at it; while the band made a lot of music in the time missing from 20 Years Of Weird, it must not have been as important or memorable to them as the formative stuff from the Eighties and early Nineties.

That sounds combative, but how else could such an omission be qualified? In this particular case, it's best not to ask too many questions and advisable to simply take the comp at face value. The live cuts collected offer a decent sampling of the band's powers as a very idiosyncratic but high energy rock band in the early going (the cover of “Whole Lotta Love” where Coyne bellows “Satan!” in place of “Love” fits perfectly with the depraved carnival ride of “Can't Stop The Spring”) and a very quirky but increasingly aesthetically-conscious outfit during what Coyne refers to as the band's “heyday” in the Nineties (all fans—every last one of them—need to hear the take of “Moth In The Incubator” pulled from a 1995 performance and included here; it is beyond description) as well as some of the experiments undertaken by Coyne in his off time (“Sleeping On The Roof” is an excerpt from the first of a series of “parking lot experiments” that would eventually inspire Zaireeka). The inclusion of “Free Radicals” (which was a preview of At War With The Mystics at the time of this comp's release) and the previously unreleased “Enthusiasm For Life Defeats Existential Fear” render the album a fan favorite for 2006 but, now its interest has depreciated. 20 Years Of Weird was an exciting release for its time, but as that time passed, it has become a little out-of-date and will finally be rendered totally redundant if “Enthusiasm For Life...” resurfaces on a box set at some point.

At War With The Mystics
(Warner Brothers, 2006)

After four years, a feature-length documentary, seven appearances on feature film soundtracks, a lot of well-received touring and a tremendous amount of fanfare after Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots catapulted The Flaming Lips onto the upper-most echelon of cult rock stardom, it seemed like it might be time to follow that success up (work had already begun by the time Fearless Freaks came out, but the sessions were very closed and very close-knit), but deciding how to do that effectively must have been a daunting process. Put yourself in the situation that the band was in: after having cultivated a public image as a troupe of substance-affected, idiosyncratic, guitar-rock-identified weirdos, The Flaming Lips pressed the giant 'career reset' button with the release of Yoshimi and imagined a whole other world for themselves that was very electronic and insular. That album's success marked the release as a genuine musical Year Zero in terms of what possibilities were open to the band, but one important door was most definitely closed—there was no going back. Trying to unceremoniously return to their alternative rock roots was impossible; Yoshimi was too big, had (possibly) won too much attention and turned on too many minds. Trying to backstep now would give newer fans won over by Yoshimi the impression that they'd been suckered into coming along for the ride only to be forgotten, and would remove all doubt from older fans that Yoshimi was only the best creative cul-de-sac ever recorded; the band didn't deem it valuable enough to pursue, it was a fluke. Neither of those options would be particularly attractive to anyone, so the group remained at an impasse.

What's a band to do when they discover they've lodged themselves between a very large rock and a very clean, sanitary and critically-revered hard place?

How about draw a very detailed map delineating how they'd arrived from the secular provinces of indie rock to the big clamorous bustle of Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots and call those directions At War With The Mystics?

Sitting as the midpoint between the more organic and rockist sound that characterized their pre-Zaireeka albums and the far cleaner and pristine sound of Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, At War With The Mystics combines the production typically associated with a rock record with the far tighter and more clinically unpolluted designs associated with electronic music—but takes care to leave the delineating spaces between the parts in so listeners can't miss the difference. Because of that approach, listeners are treated to a sort of finished work that seeks to sound as if it's in transition; the electronics collide regularly with the real-time instruments present in a way that seems to want to knock them into shape and get them to fall in line while the real-time parts strain ceaselessly against their leashes.

Confused? Think of it this way: unlike Yoshimi (which shows The Flaming Lips gazing in awe at the spotless beauty of a finished, futuristic world), At War With The Mystics could be looked on as a sort of prequel that looks at the struggles in that occurred before it attained the Yoshimi utopia. There is more emotion and jubilation in Mystics' dozen songs—a greater emotional and uniquely human element when stacked against Yoshimi's tightly wound and meticulous presentation—which helps to imply that the narrative world has yet to iron out the chaos. In that way, At War With The Mystics is a much wilder ride than Yoshimi because each track centers on the classic literary conflict between man and machine more overtly.

The story of At War With The Mystics is very much in keeping with a proposed prequel to Yoshimi too. The album opens, ominously enough, with the sort of question that one would assume COULD spark a fight:

“If you could blow up the world with the flick of a switch,
Would you do it?
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?
If you could take all the love without giving any back,
Would you do it?

And so we cannot know ourselves or what we'd really do...with all your power.”

Set against a boisterous party beat, the sentiment of those words gets lost a bit, as does the fact that a garbled, talk-box voice seems to reply every so often but, removed from the music, the lyrics actually set up the conflict of At War With The Mystics and foreshadow Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots perfectly.

From there, the difference between the electronic and organic components of the songs gets even more clearly defined, but that's the most exhilarating part of the proceedings. In “Free Radicals,” for example, the lines are impossible to miss, because each part is marked by a hard stop to accentuate them. Compare this to the hard-panning electronic chicanery in “My Cosmic Autumn Rebellion” that seeks to emphasize the real-time instrumental chord changes, thus illustrating that while the two halves of Mystics' sound are presented with a vivid dramatism of conflict, the urbane presentation of it keeps songs like the laser-zapping and glitching “The Wizard Turns On...,” the wildly over-driven guitars and hand-clapping of “It Overtakes Me” (which, set against the other songs here, seems like a pigheaded stab against the technology found elsewhere, but inadvertently has the opposite effect of the proposed one) and a far-more-technological-than-not groove of “Haven't Got A Clue” from collapsing in on itself or spilling out as a runny mess.

As the record progresses, there's no doubt that the technological touchings that manifest in the songs are winning the battle as they get progressively more plentiful. They seem to start influencing the musicians too—check out the vocal/mechanical pantomime in the outro of “Haven't Got A Clue” or the stiff click track that accompanies the stiff handclaps and very processed guitar riff at the beginning of “The W.A.N.D.” Taken together, if listeners were not aware of the eventual outcome presented on Yoshimi, it all might be construed as a wholly depressing device (the dry-eyed but elegiac melody of “Goin' On” would be a true heartbreaker) but instead turns heart-warming in this context because listeners know where the road is headed.

So how does this all translate when factored into the chronology of The Flaming Lips' narrative world? Well, put it this way: if there was any doubt that Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots was an epic, the existence and design of At War With The Mystics removes all doubt by continuing the story backward to illustrate the mitigating events that led to the Lips' new world.

U.F.O.s At The Zoo DVD
(Warner Brothers, 2007)

There’s something archly bizarre about watching The Flaming Lips play at the zoo to a 9000-plus crowd in their hometown of Oklahoma City. Every time the cameras capturing the show pan back to see the audience from behind the drum kit, it looks like what might be the biggest and most celebrated cult band in the world is playing in a corn field. Surely if a plane passed over the concert, it would have looked strange too; under a halo-shaped light rig, the band performed a nearly two-hour set to an enormous and very grateful congregation. It would have been a sight to behold from the air. On the ground too—the assembled fans that came out to see Wayne Coyne and company on September 15, 2006 seem to have an inkling that they are bearing witness to a happening.

Likewise, the U.F.O.s At The Zoo DVD is something else entirely. Featuring no less than eight separate cameras recording the proceedings (including one mounted on Coyne’s mic stand so viewers get a bird’s eye shot of the singer’s mouth) as well as hundreds of thousands of dollars-worth of party favors (giant yellow balloons, confetti, ticker tape, streamer cannons and more), baboons monitoring the show from the proverbial wings and a host of other sights normally regarded as unlikely to witness and behind-the-scenes footage (the duct tape counter clip is hilarious), the DVD attempts to capture every aspect of the show from every possible angle. It works too—there are moments during the DVD’s run-time when it is possible to feel like you were really there with the best seat in the house and both the quality of the performance as well as the quality of the DVD reproduction here offer the best possible presentation for the price tag. The surrealist atmosphere of the DVD combined with the absolutely stellar performances of the songs make for truth in advertising too; U.F.O.s At The Zoo is honestly legendary.

Christmas On Mars (CD/DVD)
(Warner Brothers, 2008)

Going back still further into real-time chronology, in 2008 The Flaming Lips were overjoyed when they were able to announce feature film they'd begun production on in 2001 finally had a release date on Warner Brothers. The work on Christmas On Mars had drawn mention in the liner notes of both Finally The Punk Rockers Are Taking Acid and The Day They Shot A Hole In The Jesus Egg, which means—if you follow the production timeline of the band's catalog—the work on the film was begun before Yoshimi was released, or any of the reissues came out. While rock n' roll bands being attached to movies was far from uncommon by 2008 (The Beatles has done it decades before, many others too), it was certainly uncommon that a rock n' roll band would direct, produce and star in a live-action science fiction motion picture. That was a big deal and it remains a feat that no other group has even attempted.

The fact that this is a rock n' roll band's motion picture not about a rock n' roll band is impressive, and it should absolutely be kept in mind as it plays through; it can't be held to a lot of the standards a lot of motion pictures are because none of the regular strategies developed for motion picture development were utilized. Very, very campy-looking and (when one breaks it right down) rather farcical, Christmas On Mars has the look and apparent budgetary limitations of a sci-fi film made in the early 1960s—right down to the deliberately odd plot line and (shall we say) limited performance capability of the “actors” (although there are few things funnier than the 'crackers in space' performance of Mark DeGraffenried as Captain Icaria). Shot mostly in black & white with color only used to punctuate certain moments and images, Christmas On Mars tells the heart-warming tale of how a soft-spoken genius of a mechanic and an alien super-being (played by Wayne Coyne) save the crew of a damaged space station on Mars (their oxygen generator is damaged) and, by extension, Christmas for the crew.

Yeah, it's about that campy.

Unparalleled cheesiness aside though, it is pretty impressive that the movie looks as good as it does; the production crew obviously embraced the limitations they were presented with rather than trying to overcome them (which would be a recipe for disaster) and comes up with something that's a little better than just 'watch-able.' The finished product is easy to respect, because it was done without much in the way of outside assistance (costs were presumably diffused by the reissue packages released in 2002 and the inclusion of some of the proposed instrumental soundtrack passages appear on the UK singles of “Do You Realize??” —although those pieces do not appear in the film). True, the band members don't have much in the way of faculties for acting, but there's no doubt in watching the results that it could have been much, much worse.

Clearly as illustrated by the tenor of this review, the feelings that Christmas On Mars incites in those that watch it are going to be mixed. The film isn't good by modern Hollywood standards by any stretch of the imagination but, because it was done completely outside of any cinematic system, was self-financed and willed into existence by The Flaming Lips, it is absolutely deserving of a lot of respect. Things like this simply do not happen but, that this one did is a unique and (like everything the band has ever done) special in its own way.

Embryonic
(Warner Brothers, 2009)

Those long-familiar with The Flaming Lips can (and will—at length) happily admonish the uninitiated masses with tales of the band's ongoing quest to integrate space rock seamlessly into the pop idiom, but at this point in their career, while the band has been wildly successful on a cult level, they've only occasionally brushed the outer-most quadrants of pop super-stardom on the most superficial (and some would say ironic) of levels; even as their sound has gotten progressively larger, more bombastic and broad—invading the truly genuinely populous medium of popular music (as in, everyone knows your name and bodyguards need to be hired to ward off and deter stalkers) has proven to be a daunting chore.

So after ten years of attempting to infiltrate the mainstream, The Flaming Lips have flipped the entire endeavor on its head with Embryonic; while each album since The Soft Bulletin has worn a shiny candy coating on its outside to make it slide down easy with listeners, this time the pop ideas are in the basic structures of the material. Noticeably, the eighteen songs on Embryonic are shorter (regularly less than four minutes in duration) and the lyric sheets are generally more sweet in keeping with pop orthodoxy, but they're also more sparsely instrumented—to the point that they almost sound hollow between thin containing walls of dissonance. It's a decidedly significant change of pace from the dense and lush expanses of albums like At War With The Mystics, Zaireeka (which took four discs to contain all the sound) and Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. Because the music is presented so consistently in this way from the jarring, sonorous guitar blast that opens “Convinced Of The Hex,” every fans' interest and curiosity will be piqued from the very beginning and they'll happily rush into this new narrative world.

What they find once they get inside will definitely surprise them. Eerily unadorned and with hypnotic rhythms and synthetic textures playing the central roles, the tension is palpable in Embryonic. A sense of melancholy dominates songs like “The Sparrow Looks Up At The Machine,” “See The Leaves,” “Powerless” and “Worm Mountain,” and—in spite of an obvious trip hop influence—casts an incredibly insular pall over the entire proceedings. On the surface, it feels uncharacteristically bleak for The Flaming Lips—a band that has always played a smiles card (whether chemically induced or not) for their fans—and those initially taken aback by the difference find themselves hunting feverishly through the album to find that grinning moment that just isn't there.

That sounds like it's supposed to be a critical slight; certainly new prospective fans will be scratching their heads in wonder at what all the fuss about The Flaming Lips could be about, but long-time fans will relish in this new perspective on the band's sound. As the dim introspection of “Worm Mountain” parts halfway through its runtime and suddenly brightens for a moment, the warmth conveyed is exquisite in its serene delivery, and will win hearts with the emotional contrast contained in just one song. That moment fans the flames of curiosity, and on the second pass through the album it's revealed that similar contrasts are used throughout the record to help propel the songs forward. Once listeners clue in to that fact and apply that principle to everything they hear, Embryonic proves to be breathtaking in its delicacy—even if it's unclear where this trail the band is following will lead listeners next.

Such is part of the appeal with The Flaming Lips though isn't it? Watching mastermind Wayne Coyne pull something extravagant and luxurious from out of the ether? Embryonic is a defining moment in that practice and (once again) leaves all possibilities wide open in the end.


Dark Side Of The Moon (with Stardeath and The White Dwarfs, Henry Rollins and Peaches)
(iTunes exclusive, 2009)

If history has shown us anything, it's that The Flaming Lips are not a great cover band. Sure—there have been some triumphs over mastering or improving upon the work of others or offering up an inspired interpretation of a song (the band's early cover of “Summertime Blues” was worth a shake in a delirious sort of way, the version of Neil Young's “After The Goldrush” was okay, “Peace Love And Understanding” was listenable and the cover of Madonna's “Borderline” was one of the very few gems to show up on Covered: A Revolution In Sound—a compilation of acts signed to Warner Brothers covering other bands that have been signed to Warner Brothers), but an equal or greater number of the band's attempts have been tediously unlistenable flops. Is that disappointing or worrisome? Not really—a good cover is great but the bad ones are only more static; unless of course it's a universally beloved song that has been butchered, in which case there aren't many people that won't stand up to express their disdain. Because of that historically very dicey stance, it means that The Flaming Lips attempting to cover an entire album that is widely regarded as a classic could go one of two ways: either it'll be a passably respectable effort (depending on how true to the original the group stays) or it'll be a colossal and mawkish flop.

Happily, the band's re-presentation of Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon falls (for the most part) into the former category and only occasionally touches upon the latter. That it all pans out also offers some credence to the theory of what music was the stuff that initially inspired The Lips; borrowing Henry Rollins (formerly of Black Flag—for the clueless) makes plain some punk and hardcore inspiration, and the choice to take a staple album from the eminent authorities on space rock covers the 'classic rock' side of the band's genetic code.

It's a solid plan with a good desire, all The Flaming Lips have to do now is not generate outrage by tweaking tradition a touch too much.

As it turns out, the current line-up of Flaming Lips (singer/guitarist/songwriter Wayne Coyne, bassist Michael Ivins, multi-instrumentalist Steven Drozd and long-time Lips touring drummer/recent full-time inductee Kliph Scurlock) are a remarkably adept cover band with the right material. As a fluttering white noise veil and introductory monologue by Rollins parts to reveal “Speak To Me” and “Breathe,” it's almost as if Dark Side Of The Moon was made for them to tackle. The melancholy and introspective melodies of “Speak To Me” and “Breathe” are an excellent foil to Coyne's normally ecstatic vocalese, and the marching rhythm supplied to the tracks takes up the slack to pump up adrenaline levels instead. It's a fantastic moment that has everyone within earshot—even the skeptical—looking up to take surprised notice.

The surprises keep coming too as “On The Run” somehow takes on a simultaneously passive-aggressive AND ominous overtone; the recurring cackle that first appeared in the tracks before it reaches the point where it's able to make listeners shudder in spite of themselves. It's at this point that the band (and listeners too) becomes aware that they'll be able to stretch these songs in any direction they choose and be able to at least pull it off.

That's when the re-thinkings really start to pick up steam. Under The Flaming Lips' watch, the metronomic introduction of “Time” gets mutated—courtesy of some sampled coughs and pants—to resonate with the rhythm of a far more biological timepiece that will hypnotize listeners with its intriguing, constant rhythm. The trend continues into “The Great Gig In The Sky” where Coyne joins the band in some melancholy introspection (but it's even more poignant on “Brain Damage”), but also goes a step further by injecting some wistful and romantic hope into his melody; the assembled crew seems to internalize these songs and take a minute to really feel them before they return a respectful tribute to the material that does the songs justice but also puts some of the band into them.

That isn't to say that The Flaming Lips' interpretation of Dark Side Of The Moon isn't without its flaws. “Time” seems to awkwardly miss a beat when the band gets to the “Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way” line (the Lips aren't English, so how could they sing it that way right? They obviously don't want to open a whole other can of worms by inserting their own nationality, so they just sort of feebly fumble it). A very sinewy take on “Money” stands in perfect opposition to the opulence of the original cut. It's not exactly a matter of these songs having a sore spot in them (at least, presumably not), just that when the band reaches a point they don't want to touch, they simply leave it wide open and blank rather than compensating. Some listeners will appreciate the Lips' tact when they leave a spot rather than trying to fudge the edges in hopes that no one will notice, but others will be troubled by those holes and become frustrated by them. Those moments are the 'X-Factor' by which The Flaming Lips' take on Dark Side Of The Moon will live or die with listeners but the decision is (as usual) up to personal sensibilities; depending upon how overbearing a listeners is, they'll either take it or leave it. Either way though, the contrast between Dark Side Of The Moon and the more sparely constructed Embryonic will have listeners eager to see what The Lips have in store next; per usual, all bets are off and fans remain at the mercy of Wayne Coyne's whims and inspirations.

Happily, they're almost always an interesting and exciting idea to listen to.

Artist:
www.flaminglips.com
myspace.com/flaminglips

Download:
"The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song" from At War With The Mystics - [mp3]
"Convinced Of The Hex" from Embryonic - [mp3]
"Silver Trembling Hands" from Embryonic - [mp3]
"Money" from Dark Side Of The Moon - [mp3]