“Yeah” is something used in this context, but here, the humorous repetition of that word, first as an acapella vocal intro, ends up being the answer to a series of questions posed about what one would do if given the power of king or president for a day. I normally detest songs that use a single, repeated vocalized syllable as their main hook, because it’s usually a syllable like “na na na” that doesn’t mean anything and is just supposed to get you all excited over nothing. Now let’s put on our safety goggles and combat boots and venture forth into the war zone. So this album is a great little feast for the ears. (As a matter of fact, two songs that deal with disaster and death are among the album’s best tracks.) And to top it all off, these guys really like their talk boxes and fuzzy guitar effects, as they play against the often synthesized, spacy backdrop. It’s that “macabre” element which used to keep me at a distance with some of the Lips’ material, but I don’t feel that when it pops up here. Some of these questions might be common one for musicians to ask us to sit down and think about, but few do it with such an uncanny combination of the humorous, the bizarre, the cutting, and even the macabre. What are we doing here in this universe? Why do we get one life, and one life only, an identity which is not interchangeable with any other? Why do our attempts to have power over our own universe often lead us to harm our fellow human beings? When is the big natural disaster going to come along and wipe us all out? Coyne’s ponderings are often witty, maybe sometimes a bit random, but usually relatable. It’s just that the sci-fi is distilled into a lot of its basic questions here, rather than having to prop up characters who pose those questions. Those of you who geeked out over the trippy lyrics of the past albums shouldn’t be too disappointed here. I say that current events inform a lot of songwriters in some vague way, so it’s not like this is the Flaming Lips’ American Idiot or Living with War or whatever.Īnd none of this is to say that the Lips have abandoned their fanciful flights of science fiction altogether. Some have seen a political thread running through the album, which is in stark contrast to the decidedly fictional stories that have inspired the past two. It’s just the Lips being who they want and writing about whatever. No such things are problematic on Mystics. Anyway, that album was tough to listen to at times – it seemed like there was a bad vocal take to match every beautiful instrumental bit. The Soft Bulletin may have stuck to its theme a little more faithfully, but not to the extent that I really had a grasp on how the story worked out. I tried as best I could to fanwank and rediscover the lost story thread, but it really wasn’t there. Let’s face it… Yoshimi all but dropped its story after the first few tracks. These songs still flow nicely into one another, without having to hint at a unified story. As much as I seem to be rediscovering my identity as a lost child of the prog rock era (as my enjoyment of Dream Theater would attest to), I actually think the Lips are better off for not making this one a concept album. So, that thing I said about the theme… yeah, there doesn’t seem to be one here. But mostly, it’s because they’ve honed their skills and found a more convincing way to marry the organic and the synthetic, resulting in a collection that registers in my brain as “sublime” far more often than it registers as “substandard”. Is it because there’s not as much pretense of a theme for the band to deviate from here? Is it because the lyrics speak profound truths into the current political landscape? Eh, maybe a little. And you know, that’s almost true, but what I’ve found is that the mystics keep me coming back a lot more often than the robots did, or the scientists racing to save the universe. I figured, At War with the Mystics will probably have some highly entertaining singles, a few mellow tracks lying in wait for me to be dazzled by them, and some instrumentals and other random filler that I don’t really care about, just like those other albums. They were just highly inconsistent – either lead singer Wayne Coyne sounded bloody awful (a problem mostly remedied on the latter album, likely due to some studio magic), the lyrics weren’t going where I wanted them to (or anywhere at all), the tempo and flow of a song couldn’t make up its mind, etc. I didn’t know much about their history, but I found The Soft Bulletin and Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots to be entertaining, and at times even beautiful, pieces of work. Sure, I liked their previous geeky, spacy explorations just fine. I’ve gotta admit, this new album from The Flaming Lips was not among my most anticipated albums of the year. In Brief: War seems lackadaisical at first due to how it backs off after a great start, but repeated listens will dig up its quirky, sublime beauty.
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