If the future has a soundtrack, the new Flaming Lips album just might be it. Looking from Earth out into time and space and then back at ourselves, these big, cosmic songs ask the big questions but manage to keep it light at the same time. Plus they make a lot of cool noises, too.
On their most recent album, "At War With the Mystics," the Flaming Lips get serious but still sound like they're having a great time. These guys have been at it for over 20 years, and they still sound as fresh as ever. Youngsters on the current rock scene could learn a thing or two from these veterans.
Tracks like "My Cosmic Autumn Rebellion" and "Vein of Stars" are just as spaced-out as their names imply - too bad this wasn't available when Kubrick made "2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968). They do a fine job of avoiding the pretension often associated with prog-ish rock, however, as they sound just as colorful and hip as the album's cover art suggests, at least for a little while.
Like Orwell's "1984" or Huxley's "Brave New World," the Lips' vision of the future gets a bit homogeneous at times. The middle tracks of the album all sound very similar and tend to drag on without reaching a satisfying conclusion. Even the first single, "The W.A.N.D." sounds perhaps a little too shiny and smooth to maintain the listener's interest the whole way through.
Fans of prog rock will enjoy hearing the various influences that pop up throughout "At War With the Mystics." "The Sound of Failure" calls to mind Radiohead's "Electioneering" sound effects with Yes-style vocals. The guitar bites from the track "Free Radicals" would sound at home in a Nine Inch Nails tune. The Lips' singer Wayne Coyne manages to sound like Willie Nelson at one point, while on the following track, one could swear he or she was listening to King Crimson. The impressive thing is that, by combining these various influences, the Lips manage to avoid sounding derivative.
The part of the album that gets heavy is the lyrics. One theme that weaves in and out of nearly all the tracks on this album is a sense of doubt about identity and meaning. It's almost depressing, really.
A good example is the song "It Overtakes Me / The Stars Are So Big... I Am So Small... Do I Stand a Chance?", whose title gives you a good sense of the mood. Coyne insists that "it overtakes me, it master-slaves me." He sounds tiny as he laments "looking up at the sky / I'm scared that I don't understand / anything at all" on the same tune.
Coyne also turns his self-doubt into anger at others. On "Haven't Got a Clue," he berates another, claiming "Every time you state your case / The more I want to punch your face." Coyne clears things up on "Free Radicals" by explaining his anger: "You think you're so radical / But you're not." It is often said that we are often most angered by others when we see our own faults in them. Perhaps these misunderstood identities of others reflect a more personal crisis.
The album opener, "The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song," provides an awfully auspicious beginning. It starts off sounding like a campfire sing-along or an a cappella group's dream, all the while asking big questions like, "With all your power / What would you do?"
Another question they should probably ask, however, is "how much is too much?" The album ends with a track called "Goin' On," a sad tune that drags on and on while going nowhere. It serves as a reminder of the one glaring weakness of "At War With the Mystics." This album has a lot of promise in the beginning, but certainly loses steam by the end, though that does make it a great album to fall asleep to. Hopefully the future has better things in store.
