Playing out more like a sonic accompaniment to Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Flaming Lips’ latest offering, At War with the Mystics, carves a 12th niche in the repertoire of The Lips while providing more politically-charged audible grandeur.
Four years ago, The Lips introduced Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots to a mass still softened by the blow and hysteria of Sept. 11. The album tackled issues of mortality and hope. Coincidentally, in yet another administration led by a son of a Bush, the band now tackles a new economic stronghold: the war in Iraq.
Not surprisingly, At War with the Mystics opens slightly obscurely with an incessant “yeah yeah yeah yeah” chant in the aptly titled “The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song.” The track quickly turns to being a politically motivated song asking the listener what they could do better if they had all the power in their hands, as blatantly illustrated in the chorus, “With all your power/ What would you do?”
However, just with any Flaming Lips release, any types of serious, heavy-handed messages are offset by fluffy melodies and an occasional track that is as far left of the album’s core theme as the central meaning itself.
Set to a beautiful melody reminiscent of a Pink Floyd track or the live interpretation of “Pushit” from Tool’s Salival, “The Sound of Failure” attacks the likes of Gwen Stefani and Britney Spears while elevating the message that it’s OK to be sad and fall on your face sometimes, “Standing there in the graveyard/ While the moon sprays its fireworks in your hair/ The sound of failure calls her name/ She’s decided to hear it out.”
As one of the first tracks to “leak” onto the Internet, “The W.A.N.D.” nearly instantly became a fan favorite from the album as it wet fans’ pallets for the new release. Admittedly, the song still incites me to crank my stereo whenever it comes on the radio or plays from my CD player because of its crunchy guitars and distorted vox. But regardless of the song’s cranking quality, “The W.A.N.D.” serves as a hard-nosed political cut with the heaviest message of the tracks.
Lead singer Wayne Coyne preaches, “They’ve got their weapons to solve all their questions, they don’t know what it’s for/ Why can’t they see it’s not power, just greed, to just want more and more?” while offering the perfect use and placement of the word “motherf—–” in any song to date: “I’ve got a tricked out magic stick that will make them all fall/ We’ve got the power now, motherf—–; that’s where it belongs.”
It is not just three tracks that make At War with the Mystics one of the best albums released in 2006 so far, however; rather it is the LP’s complete playability. From start to finish, the album never fails to keep the listener’s attention and even musters urgency for more — and that is why The Flaming Lips is one of the most beloved alternative rock bands 23 years running.
