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| Kings Theatre. Brooklyn NY |
The Flaming Lips, for their part, offered a phantasmagoria of lights, images, props and confetti in support of a tour that celebrates the 20th anniversary of their popular album Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. (Actually the album came out in 2002; the pandemic has pushed back a lot of anniversaries.)
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| Attack of the Pink Robots |
Did I say "popular"? The most well-worn track on the album, "Do You Realize?" has just under 80 million streams on Spotify. That number is the dream of many an artist, but a drop in the bucket for today's most popular acts. Neo-psychedelic latecomer Tame Impala has topped a billion with "The Less I Know the Better" and drawn 100-500 million listens numerous times. Even the Lips' sort-of-iconic "Race For the Prize", from their 1999 album The Soft Bulletin, has drawn under 25 million streams. Another Australian neo-psych band, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, which bears comparison to the Lips in a number of ways, has beaten that number several times. All of which is to say that for their 20 or so studio albums (depending on what you count), numerous EP's, compilations and collaborations, the Flaming Lips remain something of a niche band.
Perhaps they could also be called an acquired taste. There is nothing difficult to like about the Flaming Lips' music; what may need to be acquired is an attachment to their culture. How to describe that? Pictures, of course, are worth a lot of verbiage, and you can see from the ones here that "excess" is part of their DNA. Consider the fact that nearly every song was accompanied by at least several types of visual cues competing for one's attention, including -
1. Constantly moving, multicolored background patterns
2. Laser lights in complex, layered beams trained on the audience
3. Bright white flashing lights
4. Inflatable props of various types
5. The lyrics flashed word by word on the backdrop screen
6. Fog, confetti, rubber balls and other additional props
7. A bubble enclosing the lead singer
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| Sensory overload is a key component of a Flaming Lips concert |
The music, presumably the main point of the show, is similarly layered and consuming, bathing the large auditorium in sound that ranges from a keyboard-emphasized booming bass to the extreme highs of polyphonic synthesizers, with guitars and vocal harmonies filling out the middle. Two drummers (presumably Matt Kirksey and Nicholas Ley, though no musicians were introduced) provided rhythm in most songs, neither of them shy about making a lot of noise.
The voice of Wayne Coyne, the lead singer and personality of the group, soars above the mix with high and sometimes scratchy intensity, a kind of cross between Jon Anderson and Neil Young. To those who know the songs, who have caught enough of a whiff of Lips culture to know what to expect, he is the child at the heart of the Flaming Lips world, the glue that makes the slime gel. He is also the only original member of the band, though Steven Drozd, who plays guitar and other instruments, has been with them for more than 30 years.
His inter-song banter also accounts for a good deal of the band's character. He can be effusive, gentle, funny and gratuitously foul-mouthed, as if trying to cover all emotional bases at once. You have to be a certain kind of person, I think, to enjoy the monologues, and I plead guilty to not being that kind of person, exactly. One of Coyne's primary forms of audience interaction is to instruct the audience to "Scream" and "Keep screaming!". The impression that he was asking people to pretend they were more excited than they really were never quite left, even after he explained, a couple of hours into the show, that his purpose was to lift up any audience members who might be out of sorts. It did not strike me as a very effective bit of pop psychology and therefore rang a bit hollow.
Which is not to say the fans weren't excited or screaming enough anyway - the audience was clearly in Coyne's hand, even after he apparently bonked someone waving one of his props around. (I wasn't close enough to see exactly what happened, but it was serious enough that they stopped the song and issued profuse apologies.) He tends to thank the audience multiple times after every song, but the streams of "thankyou thankyou thankyou thankyou..." became predictable and left me wondering if Coyne is uncomfortable with more spontaneous engagement. On the other hand, a few monologues, including one about searching for a lost toy airplane in a warehouse, were entertaining and didn't seem all that rehearsed. But when he started waxing philosophical the ideas came off as a collage of new age platitudes.
This is what I feel to some extent about their lyrics, too. They sometimes captivate you with surprising turns, but they also sport a mix of optimistic naïveté that conjures up Rod McKuen, and puerile space fantasies that conjure up too many post-psychedelic bands to name. Probably their best set of lyrics is the whimsical and humorous "She Don't Use Jelly", one of their few radio hits, while "Do You Realize?", from the Yoshimi album, demonstrates just how shameless their clichés can run:
Do you realize
you have the most beautiful face?
Do you realize
we're floating in space?
Do you realize
that happiness makes you cry?
Do you realize
that everyone you know will someday die?
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| The band projects the lyrics to every song in real-time |
The song ends with another cliché about "the world spinning 'round" (re-used from Paul McCartney's "The Fool on the Hill", which at least is not a gallery of clichés).
There is an important nuance to mention about this song and other Flaming Lips lyrics - they tend to write about death from the optimistic point of view that it "won't defeat us", or something along those lines. In more sophisticated hands some deep insights can emerge from this idea (for instance, in Laura Nyro's "And When I Die" or Hugh Prestwood's song "Bristlecone Pine") but the Lips' lyrics leave us mostly in the realm of kitsch, dead or alive, on earth or beyond.
I have to acknowledge, though, that the kitsch seems a bit calculated, and I'd surmise that the aura of childlike innocence is one of the things that appeal to Flaming Lips fans. That might be true of Rod McKuen's poetry too, but in that case it seems like a pseudo-art product for those not prepared for the challenges of serious poetry. What's going on here feels different; more like a consciously naïve point of view that is not yet clouded by the complexities of the adult world. That, in any case, is the best case I can make for it.
But I still found the projection of the lyrics distracting, both because words draw attention away from everything else and because I had the distinct feeling that I would prefer not to know what they were saying. I generally assign lyrics a relatively low degree of importance in rock music anyway; when they are particularly original, poetic or thought-provoking they definitely add to the value of the song, but when they are not the music can stand well enough on its own, so long as the lyrics are not outright objectionable. I don't find their lyrics objectionable, just not worthy of making constant demands on my attention.
Were it not for the ear-candy appeal of their music it is hard to believe Coyne's lyrics would be taken seriously. (I call them his because he does lead vocal duties; on the albums all songs are credited to the entire band.) But ear candy it is, in a way that has been compared to the Beach Boys, not without justice, but also reminds one of the melodic and Mellotron-rich sound of the Moody Blues, or the synth-heavy sonic spread of Yes, with rich vocal harmonies too. Because the mix is so complex it is not always easy to hear the what guitar is doing, and I missed, to some extent, the guitar-forward songs of those prog-rock bands, as well as the Lips' own guitar-heavy sound prior to The Soft Bulletin. They seem to be in roughly the sonic mode of Genesis these days. But they are so diverse and unpredictable over the course of their career that any category or comparison risks being outdated by the next album.
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| Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips |
The first few Flaming Lips albums, recorded for an indie label in the late 1980's, have more than a bit of the punk rock aesthetic, though with a twist here and there that tends to undermine the "post-punk" label. (In this they resemble another Aussie band that ended up in neo-psychedelic territory, The Church.) Their transition to a more noticeably neo-psych or neo-prog sound came after they moved to Warner Bros. in 1991. If the first couple of tracks on the 1992 album Hit to Death in the Future Head leave the impression that nothing much had changed, the rest of the album cannot be mistaken for post-punk except in the chronological sense. The following year Steve Drozd took up duties as drummer, initially, but he plays just about every instrument they use, and sings as well. By the time they recorded The Soft Bulletin in 1999 their mature sound had taken shape; the album brought them awards and critical acclaim, after which Yoshimi cemented their reputation. (For a thorough review of Flaming Lips recordings through 2010 please see this Trouser Press page.)
In spite of this rough summary, they have never been tied to a single type of sound, nor do they disdain almost any kind of experimentation. From time to time they put out more typical, hard-edged rock, only to go on to record long, ambient instrumentals. They have also offered albums of cover material: with or without collaborators, they have recorded complete cover sets of many of the milestones of psychedelic and progressive rock, including Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, In the Court of the Crimson King, Dark Side of the Moon and the first album by The Stone Roses. (Not all of these have been issued as regular commercial releases.) Many other covers and a Christmas album have dropped in one form or another. At this concert they covered "Borderline" - no, not the popular Tame Impala song, as one might have expected for neo-psych creds, but Madonna's hit single.
To say the Flaming Lips are intoxicating in concert is an understatement. Overwhelmed by thundering bass notes, orchestral synths and flashing lights, even sustaining a mild headache, I was nevertheless gripped by the music from the start, and stood for most of the nearly 3-hour concert as they battled pink robots (playing the entire album) and then went on to perform a series of songs, including most of their more popular ones, all of which held their own as concert pieces.
This was somewhat surprising, as most of their recent studio recordings emphasize Coyne's more plaintive tones and the ambience of the synth-driven sound. This led to the impression that a concert might be a kind of lightweight affair. It was anything but - least of all, I suppose, to the mass of standing-room ticketholders at the front of the stage, who swayed and jumped to the music and Coyne's stage antics. I've seen some contemporary bands who are more to my taste on disk (or online) than the Flaming Lips, but are considerably less impressive in concert. Excess, it seems, works pretty well as a wall of sound, even if I could have lost some of the inflatables, lived with fewer lights, and done without projected lyrics. I came away wanting to go back to some of the songs to see if I might have missed something when I listened to the album.
It is worth mentioning that the Lips are known to use a certain amount of pre-recorded material during their concerts. It is simply impossible to duplicate on stage everything that is done in recording studios these days. In fact, long before these days - for example, in the 1970's 10cc performed "I'm Not in Love" and other material live with the help of pre-recorded tracks, because the effects achieved in the studio would have required at least an entire chorus. There's no deception here (it's not lip-synching); even in the classical music world the reliance on electronics and tape loops makes it an academic exercise to say whether the effects were previously recorded and played back or "played" on stage by triggering a programmed sound effect.
The light show was probably the most complex I have seen since the 2003 reunion tour of the 1970's prog-rock group Nektar. (I had seen them several times before that too.) That band, who consider their lighting designer (Mick Brockett) a member, similarly performed in front of an ever-changing backdrop of visual effects that included filmed sequences, patterns and even live footage of the band from previous shows. It was all handled in real-time by Brockett, with a self-designed system of projectors and foot-controls. (In a shocking coincidence, as I'm preparing to post this they are playing a concert in Long Island celebrating the 50th Anniversary of their 1973 album Remember the Future; it will lack the presence of guitar genius Roye Albrighton, who died in 2016, but includes Brockett and 2 other original members.) I would be surprised if the Flaming Lips did not count them as an influence, both musically and visually. Though the projected art is different, the concept is very similar, and it would not be hard to imagine either of them covering the other's music.
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| One of the moving images that form the backdrop to the Flaming Lips' concerts |
It seemed only logical, in fact all but mandatory, to close with their most thrilling number, "Race For the Prize", since playing it earlier might have risked that whatever followed would be anti-climactic. I'd be equally surprised to find Kate Bush doing "Running Up That Hill" in the middle of a show. (Though I'd also be surprised to find her doing a show at all.) Apparently Coyne & co. had the same thought, and there was little need to say they were done when the song ended. Just in case, though, Wayne had informed the audience early on that they would be playing "until about 11:30, when they kick us out". The song ended at 11:28 p.m.
Race For the Prize (clip) - The Flaming Lips - Kings Theater 6/8/2023
As I think back on the concert I can't help musing a bit on the significance of sensory excess in our culture. From Disney World to the Bicentennial Fireworks, we seem to love it for its own sake. It's related to what Kant called "the sublime", not because it is aesthetically great, which it usually isn't, but because it overwhelms the senses while being comprehensible to the mind. From the grossly overbuilt cars of the 1950's to the gaudiness of some wedding halls, excess seems to please us when it helps us express ourselves without inhibition. The magnificent interior of the Kings Theatre itself - one of five palatial theatres built by Loews in 1929 (the same year as the Beacon) - is perhaps an expression of the ebullience of the "roaring twenties". All of them opened on the eve of the Great Depression, yet as businesses folded left and right and the vaudeville shows the theatres were partly designed for went out of style, somehow they survived, to eventually host the sensory excesses of Cinerama, Imax and Avatar.
Excess has resulted in a world where the climate and environment are perhaps irreparably damaged, which strongly suggests we need to control it better in the future. But if it serves some deeply human emotional need - as testified by so many aspects of our culture, including every new blockbuster CGI-created 3D-spectacled superhero film - it is probably here to stay in one form or another.
In which case, the form it takes in Flaming Lips concerts is probably one of the most positive and sustainable. So, having just watched a documentary on the music for (increasingly excessive) James Bond films, it's irresistible to end my comments on the Flaming Lips by saying that as far as excess goes, nobody does it better.
*** All photographs and video © 2023 by Anton Alterman ***
