New Sounds in a New Time:
Thinking about the Flaming Lips

April 15, 2006

The above cover for the new CD from the Flaming Lips offers a seeming contradiction: an explosion consisting of psychedelic baubles of bright paint. If one were to zoom in on the paint spatters, leaving out the shadowy figure, it could appear like a rather standard psychedelic design.. a lava lamp-like burst of color. The contradiction is also present in the title itself: At War with the Mystics.. since mystics are not usually the people anyone fights against.

The lyrics of the album revolve around power and smallness. The most beautiful moment of the album comes at the end of the nervous song "It Overtakes Me", when the music dies down and a distant male voice sings:

And I'm there, looking up at the sky
And I'm scared, thinkin' bout the way that I
Don't understand anything at all...
And how it overtakes me... and I am just so small...
Do I stand a chance?

Another song uses cosmic terms to question any version of a divine calling:

Who knows?
Maybe there isn't a vein of stars calling out my name
No glow from above our heads
Nothing there to see you down on your knees

Power gets a harsh evaluation, and in many lines it is almost impossible not to hear criticism of Bush: "Every time you state your case/ The more I want to punch your face." Although at no time is Bush or any other political figure named.. ostensibly we are in space.. but the political jibes still leap out:

They got their weapons to solve all their questions
They don't know what they're for
Why can't they see that's not power that's greed
To just want more and more

These political overtones were confirmed in the brief interview of lead singer Wayne Coyne in the April edition of Mojo:

This time I was happy to sing about drug addicts, prostitutes, monsters, for us to go wherever our imagination took us. But reality was seeping in. The enormous embarrassment that is George Bush—you can't just sit there and ignore it. I think, luckily, you end up getting a bit of both—wizards in outer space, but they're battling George Bush.

So with that in mind, what can we say about the album cover? And just who are the mystics? Given the nature of the Flaming Lips' work, one might think they themselves are the mystics.. and there is no doubt something in our national political discourse that is at war with this brand of psychedelic aestheticism. But in the terms of the album, the mystics must be equated with the "fanatics" who wield immense power. The Flaming Lips are "at war" with those who think they're radical.. but in fact are fanatical. That psychedelic explosion of the cover seems particularly appropriate in this light. This music and the sensibility it reflects is their only possible weapon.

We are in the midst of interesting times for popular music. One sign that new evaluations are in the process of being formed is the recent article in the New Yorker (April 17) devoted to Pete Seeger. He is a singer who has spent a fair amount of his life in the wilderness of critical dismissal.. probably ever since Dylan turned his back on the folk crowd in the mid-60s. But there he is, 86 and looking primed for something of a new appraisal with the Bruce Springsteen album covering his work to be released at the end of this month.

There is something refreshing in a voice that is willing to directly take on power. Bush and his crew are in the process of creating some new demands for popular musicians. It seems pointless to go on with business as usual. Nothing sounds so foreign now as music that refuses to take a stand.. in some way. This is a pressure that has obviously pushed the Flaming Lips a little out of their psychedelic comfort zone.. with triumphant results. It is also a force that must be reckoned with by other artists.

The same Mojo that carried a brief interview with Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips also carried notice that Bob Dylan has gone back into the studio to record a new album. The question must be whether the resignation that dominated Love and Theft (released 9/11/2001) can get turned into something that will sound important in a new time. We do live in a political world, now more than ever.