The Flaming Lips – At War With Mystics

Artist: The Flaming Lips

Title: At War With Mystics

Label: Warner Bros.

Rating: 6.5/10

FILE UNDER: Alt rocks most anticipated release.

CORPORATE LINE: Cosmic, consciousness-expanding and mind-shattering, At War With The Mystics, the highly anticipated follow-up to The Flaming Lips’ Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots brings together the expressiveness of recent albums with the heaviness, volume and intensity of the band’s earlier work. At War With The Mystics is personal, political, psychedelic and powerful pop.

THE GOOD:
“The Sound of Failure/It’s Dark… Is it Always This Dark??” – A departure from the earlier songs. It’s more acoustic and stripped down without all of the odd effects to distract your ears. The Flaming Lips prove they can be great even when naked and vulnerable.
“The W.A.N.D.”- A song that sounds like it came crashing out of the ‘70s with guitars blazing. The lyrics are visual, the melody kicks, and the guitar—it’ll drive you mad. If only the entire album sounded like this it would be brilliant.
“Pompeii Am Götterdämmerung” – This song is definitely influenced by Pink Floyd and is one of the best songs on the album. It could sit comfortably side-by-side with any tracks on The Soft Bulletin.
“Goin’ On” – Simply beautiful. It’s one of those songs that you fall in love with the first time you hear it.

THE AVERAGE:
“The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song” – It’s catchy, bizarre, and worth a couple of listens if you’re the curios type. But is it good? Being interesting doesn’t amount to being great. It’s more bizarre than good.
“Free Radical” – Not so radical. Wayne Coyne never sounds comfortable in the high falsetto.
“The Wizard Turns On…” – Musically this is a wonderful song with a crunchy guitar, great bassline, and radical distortion. The lyrics are sparse and ultimately hold the song back.

THE BAD:
“Haven’t Got A Clue” – The title speaks volumes.

FRANKLY: At War With The Mystics can’t touch the absolutely brilliant The Soft Bulletin. Is it as good as Yoshimi? No. It sounds like Yoshimi leftovers. Then again we originally gave The Soft Bulletin an 8/10 but over time realized it was as near a perfect album as there had been in the ‘90s. It took time to sort it out—and maybe it’ll be the same with At War With Mystics. Isn’t the great thing about music when an album gets better with every listen? So far that is the Flaming Lips mystique.

+ Charlie Craine