The Flaming Lips: At War with the Mystics

Every time a new album is released by the Flaming Lips it usually takes about ten seconds for the listening to say, “Yep, this is a Flaming Lips album.” For a band that was once one of the many one hit wonders in the mid-90’s alternative music scene, they’ve evolved into one of the bands whose new album release date is circled on the calendar. 

At War with the Mystics, is their first album in four years and if you haven’t listened to their past few efforts in a while Mystics will seem like a bucket of cold water in the face. 

The album opens with two tracks that are extremely disorienting. “Yeah Yeah Yeah Song” and “Free Radicals” both disregard time signatures frequently making you feel like you’ve been cut loose of the grooves of the song like a man overboard from a ship, only to be reeled back in violently to catchy melodies. 

The rest of the album settles into a more standard Flaming Lips sounding album, as if there’s anything standard about that. While 2002’s “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots” sounded like a science fiction album released in 2002, Mystics sounds like a science fiction album released in 1976. 

At first listen it would be easy to say that on Mystics the Flaming Lips have fallen head long into Yes-era progressive rock hell, but that’s not the case. I think a more accurate description would be Pink Floyd with less paranoia. 

One of the standout things about Mystics is Wayne Coyne’s vocals. At first it’s hard to tell that he’s actually the one doing the singing. He’s not as over the top as he was on “Yoshimi.” He’s certainly not as playful. The last song we heard from The Flaming Lips was a song on the SpongeBob SquarePants soundtrack. Coyne played the song on Late Night with Conan O’Brien inside a plastic bubble. It’s hard to imagine any track on this album being playful enough to bring out stunts like that. It’s a moody and dense piece.