| Product Summary | | Label: WARNER BROS / WEA | | UPC: 00093624996620 | | Release Date: 4/4/2006 | | Buy.com Sku: 202317070 | | Item#: M2V6E2 | Format:  CD |
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| At War With The Mystics follows the Flaming Lips tradition of not treading back over old ground, with the band initially looking for a more playful, less heavy lyrical tone on this record, while also looking to make a slightly more rock-based record than recent efforts. As ever, the development took them to some unexpected places. The resulting mix is not particularly easy to summarise, with doses of existential space-rock protest songs, commentaries about social responsibility and some really weird pop tunes. Wayne has been describing a process where the Lips were inspired by their live performances of Black Sabbath's "War Pigs" to get back to playing guitars and building songs from there.
"...most effortless and varied exploration of their charming and profound tongue to date." Dot Music
"Make no mistake, the Lips have done it: three astonishing LPs in a row." Uncut
| | Album Notes and Credits |
Notes & Personnel Info |  | Flaming Lips: Michael Ivins (vocals, guitars, bass guitar); Steven Drozd (vocals, guitars, drums); Wayne Coyne (vocals, guitars). | | After becoming the darlings of alt-rock with their two consecutive neo-psychedelic epics, THE SOFT BULLETIN and YOSHIMI BATTLES THE PINK ROBOTS, the Flaming Lips reign in their sound without diminishing their ambitions on AT WAR WITH THE MYSTICS. They haven't thrown out their LSD-soaked playbook entirely--there are still some nods to MEDDLE-era Pink Floyd here and there--but on the whole the Lips have tightened up their sound and given it a groove injection. Much of the album revolves around simple, funky rhythm patterns, terse guitar lines, and R&B-tinged keyboards, putting the vibe closer to Prince-via-Beck or LCD Soundsystem than to Lips cohorts like Mercury Rev. | | The band has been quoted as saying that listening to Black Sabbath and getting into generating power as a small unit influenced them to scale down their sound for MYSTICS. True enough, there are some heavy guitar lines and a couple of moments of rocking out, but we're not talking Queens of the Stone Age here. Overall, MYSTICS balances the Lips' airy stoner psych-pop with funkier feelings, keeping things fresh without completely changing course. | | Since 1999's The Soft Bulletin, the Flaming Lips have issued an album once every three or four years -- roughly once per presidential term, making At War with the Mystics the second album they've made during George W. Bush's presidency. While Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots' themes of seizing the moment and accepting mortality could easily be read as a reaction to 9/11, At War with the Mystics is a more overtly timely album for the mid-to-late 2000s, dealing with the motivation behind the war in Iraq and Bush's presidency. By grappling with heavy subjects like these, it could seem like the Flaming Lips are taking their role as one of America's most prominent and beloved alternative rock bands too seriously, but Mystics' light touch shows that they can still be important without being self-important. In fact, the album's most pointed tracks are the most playful. As they did on Yoshimi's "Fight Test," the Lips couch their aggression in bouncy melodies and playful production tricks. With its robotic doo wop vocals and strummy acoustic guitars, "Yeah Yeah Yeah Song" -- which asks its listeners if they could do any better if they were handed all the power in the world -- sounds oddly like a Paul Simon song updated for the 21st (or maybe even 22nd) century. "Free Radicals," which sounds like Prince via Beck with a dash of Daft Punk, and "Haven't Got a Clue," which boasts the refrain "Every time you state your case, the more I want to punch your face," get their points across emphatically -- almost too emphatically, actually, for as catchy as these songs are, they don't really expand on their thoughts or sounds much. However, the middle section of At War with the Mystics is expansive and intimate at the same time, like many of the Flaming Lips' best moments have been. "My Cosmic Autumn Rebellion" and "Vein of Stars" play like updates of The Soft Bulletin's effortless, weightless beauty, and "The Sound of Failure" is a reminder that it's OK to be sad sometimes (while getting in digs at the teen pop platitudes of Britney Spears and Gwen Stefani) set to a gorgeous backdrop of soft rock flutes and guitars and twittering electronics. This stretch of songs plays almost like a suite, which ties right in with At War with the Mystics' prog rock leanings. Pink Floyd is a major influence on the entire album: "The Wizard Turns On..." is a spacey, late-night instrumental that could easily be synched to The Wizard of Oz, while "Pompeii Am G?tterd?mmerung" also taps into Floyd's elaborate, epic power. These trippy moments make At War with the Mystics the most psychedelic and least immediate album the Flaming Lips have done in a long, long time, and the way that Mystics bounces back and forth between its ethereal and zany moments gives it a disjointed, uneven feel that makes the album a shade less satisfying than either Yoshimi or Soft Bulletin. Still, as standout tracks like "Mr. Ambulance Driver" and "Goin' On" show, the band is still fighting the good fight and confronting the bad things in life with hope, optimism, and just the right amount of (magical) realism. ~ Heather Phares |
Producer: Dave Fridmann; The Flaming Lips; Scott Booker |
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| | Technical Info | | Release Date : 04/04/2006 | | Original Release Date : 2006 | | Catalog ID : 49966 | | Label : Warner Bros. Records (Record Label) | | Number of Discs : 1 | | Studio/Live : Studio | | Mono/Stereo : Stereo | | SPAR Code : n/a | | UPC : 00093624996620 |
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| | Professional Reviews | | Rolling Stone (p.64)
- 3 stars out of 5 -- "Winners like the leftist call-to-arms 'The W.A.N.D.' and 'Free Radicals' brim with darting effects and Wayne Coyne's brightly warbled melodies..."Entertainment Weekly (p.59)
- "Much of the CD is both beautiful and heartfelt..." -- Grade: B Q (p.123)
- Ranked #34 in Q Magazine's "100 Greatest Albums of 2006" -- "[I]t was a welcome reminder that there's still no one around quite like them." Uncut (p.94)
- 5 stars out of 5 -- "[A]nother extraordinary collection....[It] veers from shattering FX to celestial sonics just as the lyrics jerk between metaphysical despair and juvenile glee." Vibe (p.151)
- "[T]he sonic details like psychedelic guitar solos abound." Mojo (Publisher)
(p.p.86)
- 4 stars out of 5 -- "Many will find the clattering, demo-freshness of MYSTICS bracing....It's a peerless smorgasbord of brain-bending sonic delicacies, food for thought and spiritual succour." E! Online 10 of 10
Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne has managed to keep his band's sound fresh for more than two decades, and recent triumphs like "Do You Realize??" and "Yoshimi Battles the Robots" prove he's only getting better with age. But after a career of putting people onstage in furry bunny costumes, performing in a gigantic plastic space bubble and writing songs about girls who spread Vaseline on toast, he has developed a social conscience on At War with the Mystics. Not that anyone will notice with loopy, ludicrously melodic tracks such as "The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song..." and "Vein of Stars" taking on the state of global affairs in a way that is both surprisingly direct yet somehow reassuringly weird.
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| | Bio | | | The Flaming Lips Despite somewhat inexplicably deciding to call themselves the Flaming Lips (Wayne - "It seemed like a good idea at the time, and it was definitely better than the Tijuana Toads. Besides, we always thought we would eventually change it."), they eventually scored a first gig. It was at an all-black bar, and they were supposed to be playing old time R&B of some sort. Against all the odds, they managed to earn two encores, each one consisting solely of the Batman theme, naturally. Not that Michael found the experience particularly easy - initially he had a few problems with being able to turn around and face the audience while playing. There followed a gig at a transvestite club in Oklahoma City, called the Blue Note. This was all pretty weird, but somehow fitting, for four skinny twenty-something (well, except for the drummer who was pushing thirty) straight white guys playing what they thought of as 'death rock'. Soon after all that craziness, the drummer guy moved on and (as far as anyone knows) joined the airforce. More drummers came and went but by 1984 the Flaming Lips were settled into the line-up which would cut their first record - with Richard English now fulfilling the percussive duties, and the band practising regularly in a disused meat locker. A wily move of buying their own practice PA system opened doors for the band. Having the only PA in the Oklahoma punk rock circles that they found themselves moving in gave these four young men the opportunity to open up for all the hardcore bands of the time, in return for running the sound for everyone else. While opening for bands such as Husker Du, Black Flag and the Minutemen, the fast developing Flaming Lips were able to inflict their curious punk noise (they had moved on from the death rock by now) on various unsuspecting hardcore fans. "You weren't supposed to like Black Flag and Led Zeppelin, so we lied and said we loved hardcore," explains Wayne, "At those shows we usually ended up sat in the parking lot listening to old Bee Gees records." In actual fact, the band were playing a lot of Who songs, as well as throwing plenty of weirder covers in amongst their own very not-hardcore creations. Their desire to provide some 'proper' entertainment was also growing, and Wayne would usually employ various combinations of jumping around, lying down to play, and generally knocking things over.
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