The Flaming Lips: At War with the Mystics

Herald rating: * * *

This Flaming Lips album arrives with a sense of expectation attached. And that's rarely happened in the band's 23-year-career.

Aside from a fleeting brush with success with the accidental hit single She Don't Use Jelly in the early 90s, and winning high praise for 1999's The Soft Bulletin, it wasn't until Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, with its blend of airy pop psychedelia and spiritual uplift, became the album of 2002 that the Oklahoma weirdos really became alt-rock contenders.

Which means At War with the Mystics, in a way, puts them in a position not unlike Radiohead after OK Computer: okay, everyone says we've apparently made the life-changing-album-of-our career. Cool. And we sure do a great concert with the animal costumes and everything. But what now? There's no real clear answer on At War with the Mystics.

It's meant to be political. But Wayne Coyne's lyrics on tracks like Free Radicals (think Kiss/1999-style Prince played by androids), or The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song aren't likely to make The Best Anti-George W Songs in the World Ever!.

While Yoshimi sounded like it was beamed in from another planet, Mystics is the crash back to earth, landing close to the old Steely Dan and Electric Light Orchestra record bins and celebrity magazines. Coyne refers to a "poor man's Donald Trump" in Free Radicals and "Gwen" and "Britney" on The Sound of Failure. That's fine and perhaps expected for a band that's finally been embraced by MTV-dom. But when Coyne sang the moving Do You Realise on Yoshimi it felt like it meant something. But Mystics seems to move the Flaming Lips back into the late 90s age of irony.

Despite its weaknesses it's often an enjoyably upbeat album which you imagine will make those famously nutty Lips live shows an even bigger bunch of fluffy ducks. Especially the stomping synth-rock of The W.A.N.D, even if it sounds close to Tubeway Army/Gary Numan's Cars. The disappointment that is this album is perhaps encapsulated in My Cosmic Autumn Rebellion which comes subtitled The Inner Life As Blazing Shield Of Defiance And Optimism as Celestial Spear of Action.

It's the most Yoshimi track here with its contemplation of the life and the universe over a sweet-tuned sprawl which could only be the Flaming Lips. It's nice in that airy pop psychedelic kind of way. But that's really it.

Label: Warner Bros