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The Flaming Lips
 "Maybe it was the cow suit I was wearing; maybe it was because I was dancing on stage with a band I adore; but one of my favourite ever memories is of The Flaming Lips delivering a triumphant version of their beautiful, jubilant ode to mortality Do You Realize?? at the 2004 Big Day Out. It was a funny, sad, joyous moment, given added poignancy by being sung by a man covered in fake blood.
Two years on from that show, and almost four since the release of the magnificent 'Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots', and I'm asking that same man the question that had been bothering me ever since word came of the imminent 'At War With The Mystics': how on earth do you follow your greatest-ever album? After all, a song like Do You Realize?? seems to sum up its subject so perfectly as to almost preclude further examination.
"You're exactly right," Wayne Coyne vigorously agrees. "I sort of feel like some of ['Yoshimi...'] is so refined and so perfect, you can't think 'well, how could you ever do something like that again?'; a song like Do You Realize?? is really better than we are. Luckily, if you don't take any of it too seriously or think of it as being too precious it's easy to go on and say 'even if we don't make another record that good, who cares?'" he shrugs. "And I think that's most artists' stumbling block: they know that the record they made is so great that they can't top it. I kinda know that it's all done by accident. It either connects with an audience and a time and a certain feeling that's out there, or it doesn't - and there's no way you can control that. We just went 'eh, fuck, let's try some stuff,' and suddenly we're like 'hey! Look at that! We've got another record!'"
In some ways '...Mystics' is more raw than 'Yoshimi...' (less programmed drums, more live instruments - and the odd bum note, as Coyne's gleefully tuneless falsetto on first single The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song demonstrates), but it's similarly fearless in its musical scope, and also similarly rather brilliant. However, while the previous two albums have proved that Coyne is of the world's great lyricists when expressing wonder, grief and joy, the album adds a new colour to his emotional palette: anger.
"On the 'Yoshimi...' record there's almost this optimism, this embracing of all of the good aspects of life and seeing the truth in all that; which is wonderful, but can be hard to think of some of it as real," he explains. "For comparison I would think of John Lennon singing Imagine, but also John Lennon singing that song where he's being mean to Paul McCartney [How Do You Sleep?]. It makes the other things resonate even more: he isn't some Tibetan monk living up on a mountain telling us how to live, he's a real guy and he can be mean and petty, but he can also see the transcendent qualities of human nature."
And there's some meanspiritedness here, but Coyne wants people to understand the motivations behind politically-charged songs like The W.A.N.D. "I hope people realise by now that music doesn't change politics, music doesn't stop wars and it's not going to change George Bush's mind." he says, his voice filling with righteous zeal, "but just singing about the things that frustrate you can really change you: you can scream about it, and then realise 'OK, we don't know the answer, but sometimes just screaming into the dark is a great help'. And that's all I'm doing.
"I think that's the problem sometimes in America: there is this mood of tolerance, which in some ways is wonderful, but there are times when you don't tolerate. Abortions are useful, good things for people who need them, so let's make that available. And smoking pot - my god, it's no big deal, let's move on. And then we go backwards in time to thinking that gay people shouldn't have the same rights as everybody else. That's where there is this liquidness to being tolerant: there is a time when we're supposed to step up and say 'you know, that's idiotic: you can't get away with saying that!'"
Well, as a great man once sang: "I thought I was smart, I thought I was right / I thought it better not to fight..."
"I know!" Coyne laughs, as I quote his own Fight Test. "And by the end of that song I regret not fighting: it's better to lose the fight than to just stand by and surrender. And I think we're one block further down the street than that now."
Then again, the album's screaming-into-the-dark moments contrast with songs like Vein Of Stars where humankind's squabbles seem ridiculous in contrast with the vastness of the universe. "Right: it's like all releases, once you finish screaming you realise that it is a wonderful world that we live in and there's all kinds of cosmic mysteries out there, and hopefully that's why this record is fun to listen to rather than some great anti-war mantra. I mean, we have some fun beating up George Bush - but who wants to spend too much time on that?"
Andrew P. Street
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'At War With The Mystics' is out now through Warners |
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