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The Flaming Lips
At War with the Mystics
(Warner Bros.)
First Appeared in The Music Box, May 2006, Volume 13, #5
Written by John Metzger
Wayne Coyne, the mastermind behind The Flaming Lips, always has had a lot on
his mind, but even by his standards, he’s working overtime on the band’s
eleventh studio outing At War with the Mystics. Turning his attention to
a broader array of worldly issues, he forsakes the thematic rumination upon
mortality that bound together The Soft Bulletin as well as Yoshimi
Battles the Pink Robots’ science-fiction-imbued storyline about post-9/11
fear. Instead, what he offers is a more loosely-knit collection of songs that
ponders such notions as personal responsibility (The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song),
the superficiality of pop culture (The Sound of Failure), and the current
clash of religious fanaticism (Free Radicals). As the set tumbles towards
the inevitable conclusion that is captured on its final trilogy of tunes (The
W.A.N.D., Pompeii Am Götterdaämmerung,
and Goin’ On), it becomes abundantly clear that Coyne’s end goal is to
awaken mankind from its apathetic slumber and inspire a populist uprising.
Essentially, he now is trying to save the world from itself — or, at the very
least, from the corporate greed that seemingly surrounds George W. Bush’s
presidency.
Such moralistic posturing, however, is a difficult thing to parlay into a
universally affecting tale without becoming overbearingly self-important, and
Coyne doesn’t do himself any favors by affixing absurdly long titles to his
songs, not the least of which are My Cosmic Autumn Rebellion (The Inner Life
as Blazing Shield of Defiance and Optimism as Celestial Spear of Action) and
Free Radicals (A Hallucination of the Christmas Skeleton Pleading with a
Suicide Bomber). Then again, The Flaming Lips always has had a fascination
of sorts with ’70s progressive rock, and from the album’s artwork to the
overblown arrangements that envelope its bubblegum pop songs, At War with the
Mystics is no exception. Although Coyne and company try to counterbalance
the seriousness of its lyrics with a zany sense of sonic humor, its efforts
frequently sound a bit hollow — as if the experimental studio trickery is being
done simply for the sake of it.
Notwithstanding, this doesn’t mean that At War with the Mystics is
devoid of merit. Throughout the album, The Flaming Lips along with co-producers
Dave Fridmann and Scott Booker playfully toy with the sonic spectrum, creating
layered and lush arrangements that are stuffed to the brim with strange effects
that whiz by with cosmic implications. Like a splatter painting by Jackson
Pollack, the music abstractly darts from a collision of The Moody Blues, ’70s
soul, and Peter Gabriel-led Genesis on The Sound of Failure to Smile-era
Beach Boys on My Cosmic Autumn Rebellion, and from the Yes-ish clatter
(circa 90125) of The W.A.N.D. to the Prince-meets-David Bowie
contours of Free Radicals. Yet, in order to appreciate fully the totality
of what The Flaming Lips has accomplished in this regard, one must listen to the
outing on a high-fidelity stereo system or, at a minimum, through a set of
quality headphones affixed to something other than an aurally-deficient iPod.
Nevertheless, the problem remains that The Flaming Lips too often circumvents
its melodic sensibility by stretching each idea until it breaks, and although
At War with the Mystics ultimately strives to update the symphonic spiritual
quests of The Moody Blues’ classics, it often sounds more like insubstantial ear
candy. 
At War with the Mystics is available from Amazon.com.
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49th Annual Grammy Award Winner:
Best Rock Instrumental Performance
The Wizard Turns On...
49th Annual Grammy Award Winner:
Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical
Ratings
1 Star: Pitiful
2 Stars: Listenable
3 Stars: Respectable
4 Stars: Excellent
5 Stars: Can't Live Without It!!
Copyright © 2006 The Music Box
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