The Flaming Lips - 'At War With The Mystics' (Warner) Released 03/04/06

A mind-boggling 25 years into their career, while many established acts rest on their laurels and become pathetic parodies of their former selves, The Flaming Lips somehow manage to come back reinvigorated and inspired every time. Musically experimental, unhinged and radiant, ‘At War With The Mystics’ is imbued with intelligent, culturally relevant undertones and almost childlike wide-eyed fascination with the world around us. If you’re tired with the dross that perennially dominates the charts (Blunt, Embrace et al), this rousing album is the ultimate anecdote.

Lead track and single ‘The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song’ is the perfect start with its sonorous “Yai, yai, yai, yai’s”, glorious verses, steel drum donks, hand claps and almost chaotic pace. Slightly unlike ‘Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots’ before it, ‘At War With The Mystics’ is not completely immersed in a world of fantasia, tackling the modern world climate but still in an archetypal wondrous manner. Wayne Coyne deftly asks on the opener “If you could blow up the world with the flick of a switch, would you do it? And so we cannot know ourselves or what we’d really do…” – subverting the norm, he questions people for knocking those in power when they themselves wouldn’t know what to do. Brilliant. Set to a yelping Prince-esque / power rock hybrid of music, ‘Free Radicals’ then dissects both sides of a suicide bombers psyche, packed with astute observations “But you’re not so radical, In fact you’re fanatical.”

Akin to many ‘Yoshimi…’ tracks, the soothing ‘The Sound Of Failure’ is nothing short of superb, containing within under its sheen pertinent observations about those who’ve suffered loss in their life losing touch with the actualities of emotions. In fact it quickly becomes clear that few bands could manage such astute observations so skilfully. Incredibly heartening, Coyne reminds us about the beauty of life with the defiant ‘My Cosmic Autumn Rebellion’, reminding us that life is there to be embraced not to defeat us. Musically too it’s an uplifting kaleidoscopic and emotionally charged soundscape. Elsewhere, the plaintive ‘Vein of Stars’ again plays on Coyne’s obsession with the cosmic, pondering whether the stars are dormant or really looking back at us. Refreshingly, he seems like a man truly humbled by everything around him.