The Beat Surrender

I can’t think of many bands that are on a major label and are as outright weird as The Flaming Lips and their own brand of cosmic outer space guitar pop that they have been peddling for a good many years since out growing their punk beginnings.

That is probably why they remain such a well respected act today, the fact that despite them changing their sound, trying new things and constantly challenging the listener (how many albums by The Flaming Lips could actually be called an easy listen when you really think about it?). In doing so they seem to have managed to retain their old fan base, while at the same time gaining newer fans like myself who hopped on their cosmic ride with the release of The Soft Bulletin album. That’s not an easy thing to do, us music fans are fickle and snobbish when it comes to their favourite bands achieving commercial success and hordes of new fans.

As well as keeping the fans happy they also seem to have managed to keep a major label happy despite the fact that they often leave people baffled and bemused by their music. Labels over the last ten years have got to a stage where a slight drop in sales or an album not staying in the top ten for a few weeks will result in you being dropped, irrespective of past glories. The Flaming Lips though are now almost something of an institution and bordering on untouchable, revered in colleges dorms on both sides of the Atlantic and often mentioned by peers as an inspiration to them, it would take a brave man to make the decision to remove them from the roster.

Even with them sitting lofty on their pedestal, gained from the critical and commercial success of the last two albums, At War With The Mystics was still always going to be an important release for the band. If you take four years out to record a long player it’s imperative that you come back with something good, something that shows it has been four years in the making but yet doesn’t have a dense cloud of toil and sweat hovering around it.

Wayne Coyne and co are a clever bunch though and have re-entered the fray with an album that plays heavily on their recent strengths, it’s poppier in direction, but when I say pop in the same sentence as this band I’m not talking your average three and a half minute churn out of melodic tunes with no substance. The Flaming Lips are not conventional in their song structures; take the opening track and recent single The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song.

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