The Bottom Line: As good as their best works, Yoshimi and Soft Bulletin, and yet doesn't rehash these works, At War With the Mystics is worth every penny
protoguy's Full Review: At War with the Mystics by Flaming Lips
The Flaming Lips' latest trek into retro-futurism, At War With The Mystics, is (yet again) a psychadelic trip with luggage. As with previous Lips work, the music combines trance-like soundscapes with musings on the nature of love and morality. Listening to this album is like doing acid while remaining completely lucid. Refusing, as always, not to dwell on past successes and treading new ground with each track, this Lips album is at once more upbeat than The Soft Bulletin and less sappy than Yoshimi Battle The Pink Robots. Of course, with the musical questions being asked (and answered), it's difficult to avoid the sticky sweetness, but there's a sincerity in the lyrics and the plaintive vocals of Wayne Coyne to hold back the sugary flood. The cover art is pure 70's art rock, a visual homage to their prog-rock influences.
With the very first track, The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song, one of the best album openers I've heard in years, the theme is laid out in shorthand. The song, with its relentlessly cheerful beat, starts out with rather odd harmonizing, reminiscent of something I heard on Man in the Moon and proceeds into what is probably the most upbeat and infectious song the Lips have done. Rather than asking the trite "What would Jesus do?" question, this bouncing piece, asks flat out, "What would you do?". If given the power to do whatever you want, would you use it in the selfish pursuit of pleasure or would you do good?
The next track, Free Radicals takes on the pseudo-radicals, those who talk a good game but who are pretty much playing lip service to radicalism in the name of fashion and trend. Wayne's Prince-esque falsetto is counterpointed with some sweet 70's era voice-boxed guitar riffs, his protest reminiscent of David Bowie's, Fame. Steven Drozd's crunchy funk guitar provides excellent punctuation to Coyne's disjointed lyric.
The Sound of Failure is probably the one song that extends from the Lips' past work. The lilting vocals strung together with flute and acoustic guitar makes me think of early Genesis. You can almost hear the melotrons until Drozd's Frippy guitar picking pulls it into the present. Ruminating on the ideas of death and the paralysis of clique, this song is similar in feeling and message to Suddenly Everything Has Changed (Death anxiety caused by moments of boredom) from The Soft Bulletin.
Go tell Britney
and go tell Gwen
she's not trying to go
against all them.
Finding the lyrics rather cryptic, as usual, I was curious if I was right in my interpretation of them, and surprisingly I was pretty close. Though there is a lot more under the surface. Apparently they had friends who were dying of cancer and they had commented about how all of this cheerful pop music around them only heightened their feelings that it was all false enthusiasm. From the Flaming Lips website:
The line in the song, "so go tell Britney and go tell Gwen" is obviously a reference back to my friends and their Muzak incident... meaning, "Yeah, go tell Britney Spears and Gwen Stefani that their energy and their Prom Queen smiles only go to prove that they don't empathize with my sadness." I believe, in the song, that Britney and Gwen could be thought of as this grieving girl's less mature friends... and that she's not trying to go against them, she just doesn't want to pretend that she understands what she doesn't really understand - what death is... what despair is... what existential fear is... She doesn't know, but she's starting to find out...
My Cosmic Autumn Rebellion is an uplifting song that is close in message to "Do You Realize?". The autumn of our existence, when all the birds of our life have flown south, this one bird stayed behind. The dualism of this bird, the straightforward message of remaining with someone after everyone has abandoned them and the message of defiance in the face of adversity, the idea that we only fail if we let ourselves fail, is held together nicely throughout this sad-sounding little melody.
There are a few other very satisfying highlights on this album, one of which is It Overtakes Me. The crunchy bass line and the fuzz guitar combined with Wayne's lyric create a seriously infectious song that begs to be sung. Sort of a funk-rock anthem for existential panic.
It overtakes me
It wakes and bakes me
It overtakes me
Ooh ah!
Another killer track is one that has been floating on the internet for a while now, "Mr Ambulance Driver". Structured around a sample of an ambulance siren, the song is a pleading call for aid, even as the victim is past saving. The song The W.A.N.D. (The Will Always Negates Defeat) is an excellent song, reminiscent of Styx or Genesis based on an experience the band had in Oklahoma and undoubtedly the influence behing the album's title and artwork. Wayne had witnessed a rather odd-looking homeless man battle unseen hallucinatory enemies with a stick, as though he was some ancient wizard taking on evil forces. What started out as a sad sight of a deranged man fighting insanity became a strange sort of uplifting thought about how this man was trying to defeat his own inner demons with his magic staff.
This is one of the few albums I've owned where the songs fell into my head rather nicely from the beginning and after further listenings, have nestled themselves in there rather comfortably. Catchy enough to play well on the first try and deep enough to keep the interest through multiple plays, At War With The Mystics is a great addition to the Lips' rather eclectic library.
There are two bonus tracks on this CD, a great cover of Queen's Bohemian Rapsody, something I would have thought no band would attempt. The Lips launch into this in concert, during one of their encores. I can see it working tremendously on stage, but it doesn't quite make it on CD. It's a great and faithful rendition, but less melodic and flowing than the original.
The last bonus track is an excellent end piece for the album. A song about the long journey of life and the hope for an illusory pot of gold at the top of the hill, the song asks and answers the question of "what do we do with our lives?"
At War With The Mystics follows the Flaming Lips tradition of not treading back over old ground, with the band initially looking for a more playful, l...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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