At War with the MysticsFlaming Lips
Warner, 2006
Numerical Feelings: 8.6
Yoshimi brought us a bright summer universe, a far-away world of long and invincible day, of people and sights, and sounds, and sounds, and sounds -- a world wherein that day gave way only to blushing rose-red sunsets, to the vibrant orange glow of alien city lights, misting up like a cloud to wrap itself around the tamed and purring tiger-stars, whilst in this sea of luminance balloons floated through, a soundtrack of horns drifting out behind them as their wakes.
With Mystics, the Lips return to true night, to undiluted blue -- it's a tone they render finely, but the shame of it is that they don't really bother to construct this album into as cohesive and unified a statement as its ancestor -- whimsy and experiment distract from the theme, make it disjointed. But all the same it doesn't really hurt the music.
In fact, most of even this album's most outlandish moments, though they jar the thematic flow, are its most engaging and brilliant. Songs like the opener, or the magnificent 'Overtakes Me', or the elsewhere well-lambasted 'Haven't Got a Clue', feature arrangements with a life all their own -- and sure the hooks and song structures must twist and contort to incorporate these restless creatures -- but what's amazing is that control is achieved in the end. I always thought the experiments in Soft Bulletin tended to leave the music way, way, behind, like some forgotten child in an airport -- but here, the Lips' sense of song is strong enough to keep everything reigned in -- while still allowing radical elements like 'Haven't Got a Clue's moaning impressionistic motive to infuse the tracks with a strange, unique vitality and voice. Otherwise, the calmer songs are graced with universally lovely melodies, and well-thought compositions -- and the band lets producer Fridmann provide plenty of stunning, glorious flights to that sonic range between feedback and nirvana that only he seems to know how to reach.
But in the end, it's Mystics' most emotionally inaccessible moments that really make the album (and make it so hard to appreciate) -- like fantastic incomprehensible treasures of old inhuman cultures, long abandoned on empty little planets, unseen and forgotten even by the cold and angry stars, and accidentally remembered in our dreams. Pretty spooky!
-5.11.2006
At War with the Mystics is the second proper album of the new century from the Flaming Lips. The Flaming Lips have been a band for like 20 years. I like their last two albums, quite a bit.
Track Listing:
01 The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song
02 Free Radicals
03 The Sound of Failure
04 My Cosmic Autumn Rebellion*
05 Vein of Stars
06 The Wizard Turns On...
07 It Overtakes Me*
08 Mr. Ambulance Driver
09 Haven't Got a Clue
10 The W.A.N.D.
11 Pompeii AM Gotterdammerung*
12 Goin' On
(*: mega-awesomist tracks)
Track Listing:
01 The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song
02 Free Radicals
03 The Sound of Failure
04 My Cosmic Autumn Rebellion*
05 Vein of Stars
06 The Wizard Turns On...
07 It Overtakes Me*
08 Mr. Ambulance Driver
09 Haven't Got a Clue
10 The W.A.N.D.
11 Pompeii AM Gotterdammerung*
12 Goin' On
(*: mega-awesomist tracks)