The Flaming Lips @ The Palace,Melbourne (17/11/11)

Fri 18th Nov, 2011 in Gig Reviews

The Flaming Lips’ ascension into the stratosphere of modern music has always been fascinating. Through each twist and turn they have offered brilliant bursts of colour in their shared creativity. With their increasingly dynamic recordings and artistic projects you could be forgiven for thinking the last frontier left is complete lift-off, where The Flips leave the earth in a catastrophic spaceship of creative madness. However if you attend one of their famed shows you will witness not a band descended into madness but one of the warmest, most beautiful live performances on this planet.

First onstage were Pond, who had journeyed all the way from Perth to play with the Fearless Freaks. Frontman Aslan McPride swayed and swaggered about the stage; intense, weird and thoroughly charming all at once. His presence was unique, the band was reliable rock ‘n’ roll, with enough flourish to keep things alive.

However, how could we ever have been fully prepared for the extra-terrestrial dreamscape explosion that was to come?

The experience of Flaming Lips live is really so magical, never before has it felt like a review could never convey the truth and the facts of that magic. It is something that has to be felt, and to give too much away would be a crime against those yet to experience it.

Wayne Coyne entered via his well-trodden space-orb, traversing the top of the crowd with a maniacal grin upon his face, while his bandmates slip through a giant pair of, well, flaming lips as the audience are showered with endless blasts of confetti.

The crowd’s energy has been stoked and the bands starts hammering, the fuck-you-up rhythms of Worm Mountain from Embryonic (with Steven Drozd playing an iPhone), then launches into the all-time indie classic She Don’t Use Jelly, which melts into The Yeah Yeah Yeah song, and is succeeded by their weird and wonderful Is David Bowie Dying?, from the EP with Neon Indian.

To constantly reinvent yourself must be hard enough, but to keep so warm and fresh some things that have been with you for almost two decades, surely that’s something else. What kind of limitless font of human warmth must that require? Fair enough, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Pt. 1 has only been about for one decade, but the warmth brought to that welled eyes.

As always the Flaming Lips continue a relentless assault on all senses. The screen behind them is used to fantastic effect, “laser hands” , the smoke, the haze, the strobes, the schoolgirl-outfitted lasses numbering 6 or so each side of the stage. Limitless, and each profoundly affecting and brilliant. Yeah, the lasses too!

So, wow – this visual is a lot, and still unmentioned go the infernal white-noise beetle, the other hundred balloons, so much more. But visual ain’t nothing without connection, and there was plenty of that happening.

Coyne wanted it more than anyone: “C’mon you motherfuckers!” he demands between songs, asking for more, more cheers! “We sing, and in the breaks, you sing!” Through this everlasting mutual love, at last came the final song, Do You Realise?. Coyne dedicated it to those with sadness in their hearts.

The spectacle always contains the potential to alienate, to defy real life to the point of causing a separation from the audience. The point of the Flaming Lips spectacle is joy, exuberance, along with awe and sharing in all of that. So while this band shoots for stars, we’re up there with them, and it’s not just space travel, it’s magic: the smile that brightens Mr. Coyne’s face through every gig, that’s magic. It’s that warmth. And it’s why we love them so much.