A Rethinking of The Flaming Lips’ “At War with the Mystics”
I was wrong. Yes, that’s right, I was wrong, and have been for three years. Contrary to my early opinions and outspoken rants to my friends, The Flaming Lips’ “At War with the Mystics” does not suck. I came to this realization today while giving it another try. Now, while I have thought it was a terrible record for the past three years, I did enjoy right off the bat songs like “The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song”, which is so incredibly joyous, “Vein of Stars”, which is one of the most haunting songs The Flaming Lips have recorded, and “Goin’ On”, which makes me feel more hopeful about the world’s future and my own personal future. But other than that I basically hated the rest of the album, sans a few classic sounding Flaming Lips instrumental passages. So this is my retraction and explanation of my sudden conversion.
Granted, some of you are probably saying right now, “Jesus Justin, this record isn’t as good as “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots”, which wasn’t as good as “The Soft Bulletin”, but was still good, and this record is literal light years away from being as good as “The Soft Bulletin”, which is in my opinion their best album. I concede this willingly, but I will argue that, despite all that, it is a good record. Just because a band’s new record isn’t as good as their past records doesn’t automatically bar it from being a good record. Now that we’ve gotten out of that way, let me explain my sudden conversion.
I went into this album, as many of you probably did, hoping for some fusion of the dense orchestral beauty of “The Soft Bulletin” with the spacey synthetic-ness and ethereal instrumental tendencies of “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots”. Therein lay my problem, and possibly your problem. Coming into a record with such huge expectations like that is never a good thing. Granted with bands like The Flaming Lips, whose past output has been so amazing, it’s hard not to have those expectations. My sudden conversion came today when I dropped those expectations and listened to the album for what it is. If “The Soft Bulletin” was The Flaming Lips doing orchestral pop, and “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots” was The Flaming Lips doing synth-laden pop, then “At War with the Mystics” is The Flaming Lips doing some odd mixture of funk, rock, prog, spacey pop, and hippy protest songs all filtered through The Flaming Lips incredibly psychedelic lens.
Don’t believe me on that description? Just look at the lyrics. Most of them are direct reactions and protests to the then current and, unfortunately, still current darkness of the Bush regime and the world in general. Look at the long song titles, especially the one with multiple parts separated by slashes. That just screams hot prog action. The songs with the aforementioned long titles scream hot prog action too, with their multiple sections, and twists and turns. As for the funk, if you’ve listened to the record you know there’s some damn funky songs on there.
What I find most endearing about the album is the positivity. Sure it’s hippy protest music, but it’s so incredibly positive. It takes the world view of “Sure things are really fucked up, but there’s enough of us malcontents to turn this situation around if we really band together.” Maybe I’m just a damn dirty hippy, but I can get behind that. Of
course there’s also those beautiful Flaming Lips instrumental passages that I can never get enough of.
So listen to the record with all this in mind and see if you like it a bit better. After all how can you resist Wayne singing, “We got the power now! Motherfuckers it’s where it belongs!,” on “The W.A.N.D (The Will Always Negates Defeat)”. Just thinking about that puts a big goofy grin on my face. Granted, there is still a semi-clunker or two on the record like “It Overtakes Me/The Stars Are So Big…I Am So Small…Do I Stand a Chance”, that I’m still on the fence about, but even semi-clunkers like that have their moments of grandeur. Just listen to the second half of that song, which is the “The Stars Are So Big…” half, which begins with a classic Flaming Lips spacey instrumental and continues on with some gentle singing by Wayne.
I admit I haven’t gotten to the point where I’m totally ga ga about the album yet, but I have come to the conclusion that it is a good record. So drop your preconceptions, listen to the record with the description I gave above in mind, and see what happens. Leave comments and let me know if it changes your opinion. I’m curious.