Music

The Flaming Lips allow fans onstage dressed as rabbits, they’re filming a sci-fi movie titled ‘Christmas On Mars’ and are led by the most affable man in rock, Wayne Coyne. It’s easy, then, to overlook the band’s dark side. Their multi-instrumentalist Steven Drozd has battled heroin addiction and their songs often deal in issues of mortality. Now, frustrated by the US leadership and following their cover of Black Sabbath’s ‘War Pigs’, they’re in fighting spirit.

This eleventh album sees the Lips trade fluffy psychedelia for a sound that evokes these unstable times. Entering with the line, ‘If you could blow up the world with the flick of a switch, would you do it?’, this is their most raw collection since 1994’s ‘Transmissions From A Satellite Heart’. Radio-friendly starter ‘The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song’ is a denigration of greed delivered by The Kinks with synths, while ‘Free Radicals’ is falsetto-fuelled rock. From here they lay down some twisted ’70s soul and funk, ‘Pompeii am Götterdämmerung’ sees them prog out and, as always, Coyne’s sense of doom is partnered with optimism on the Neil Young-like ‘Goin’ On’.

Dark yet uplifting, it’s a wonderful new dawn. And one that should see the back of the fluffy animals.