Brian Slattery Photos
Wayne Coyne at Monday night's show.
Giant inflatable pink robots. Enormous balls filled with confetti. And a veteran band, playing as well as ever, fronted by a singer who was all heart. Now-venerable psychedelic rockers The Flaming Lips returned to College Street Music Hall Monday night to an ecstatic, sold-out crowd ready to take in a show that delivered heaps of fun — and empathy.
The Flaming Lips — currently Wayne Coyne, Steven Drozd, Derek Brown, Matt Duckworth Kirksey, Nicholas Ley, and Tommy McKenzie — formed in 1983 in Oklahoma City and signed to the major label Warner Bros. in 1990. The band scored a major hit in 1993 with the song “She Don’t Use Jelly” from their sixth album, Transmissions from the Satellite Heart, which propelled them to national stardom. The band followed that up with the critically acclaimed Clouds Taste Metallic in 1995 and the psychedelic experiment Zaireeka in 1997.
But in hindsight, the band made its reputation, and secured an enduring, multigenerational fandom, on the two albums that followed: The Soft Bulletin in 1999 and Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots in 2002. The Lips have embarked on frequent tours since then, and have released six more albums, from 2006’s At War with the Mystics to 2013’s The Terror to its most recent release, 2020’s American Head. They’ve been nominated for six Grammys and won three. But in the eternal present of the internet, it’s The Soft Bulletin and Yoshimi — critical and commercial successes upon their release — that keep attracting new listeners, in part based on the strength of the song “Do You Realize??” from Yoshimi. Listen to both albums now and it’s easy to hear why: they’re genuinely strange yet totally accessible, marked by superb performances, and in the middle of it all, Coyne’s voice, delivering lyrics that balance absurdity and sincerity to offer a message of kindness and optimism in the face of darkness.
Forty years into its career, the Flaming Lips has embraced its legacy, structuring its current tour around a complete performance of Yoshimi. That, and the promise built on years of touring that a Flaming Lips live show was sure to be an extravaganza, was enough to sell out every ticket on this Monday night.
With no opening band or introduction needed, the Flaming Lips launched straight into “Fight Test,” the first song from Yoshimi, hooking the crowd fast with tight, energetic musicianship, tried-and-true songs, and visual components that brought the needed shock and awe but also paid attention to detail. Early in the show, the stage was taken over by giant, inflatable pink robots; among the pieces of confetti that fell on the crowd were some shaped like pink robots as well, rewarding those who stopped to notice. And a constant amid the dazzling backdrops were the lyrics, one word at a time, that flashed on the giant screen behind Coyne as he sang them. It brought the messages of the songs home. It also helped the audience sing along.
In performing the album live, it became clear how crucial the band’s instrumental breaks were to ramping up the energy. With the first freakout of “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Pt. 2,” the show took it up a notch, as music, lights, lasers, confetti, and an enormous ball for the audience to bat around worked together to whip the crowd into a frenzy. The raucous applause that followed gave Coyne a chance to speak.
“Maybe there are a few of you who are just coming in and don’t know what the fuck is going on,” he said, to laughter. He introduced the band and explained that they would keep playing Yoshimi through. Then, he said, “we’ll take a short break,” and after, “we’ll play until they kick everybody out.” He then began a refrain that reappeared, with genuine affection, throughout the evening: “We love you, we love you, we love you.”
As the band played through the album, Coyne kept finding ways to wind up the crowd more, professing a love of near-constant screaming from the audience. It served two purposes. First, Coyne said, “I guarantee you every time you scream, I love you. We feel every single scream.” But he also emphasized community. “We want you to be safe,” he said. “We want you to have an amazing time with no fear.”
In time, Coyne almost made space for vulnerability. In introducing “It’s Summertime,” he said the song was about the happiness and sadness of the season. Happiness because with nature in full bloom, there was the possibility that “I can transform myself,” he said. But the season could also “make you sad” with “everything exploding, and you’re trapped on the inside. This is about that sadness.” He pushed it further. “The Flaming Lips audience, we’re sensitive motherfuckers,” he said, with seeming utter sincerity. “You can see it all” — the “complex beauty” of the world, complete with “an acute awareness of suffering.” And at the moment, he added, “the best thing you can do is scream, and scream, and laugh.” The next time he asked the audience to scream, everyone’s throat opened just a little wider.
That paved the way for “Do You Realize??” Before he began the song, Coyne said, “I want you to make sure you’re with the people you love, the people you care about.… Tell them how much you love them. Don’t pass up an opportunity. You’ve got to tell them. There’s never a bad time.” That, of course, was the theme of the song, the band’s biggest hit. And maybe the lyrics can come across as saccharine when you’re sitting at home in headphones, or if you’re a little too used to irony. But in the two decades that have passed since its release, the directness of the song, the emotion it conveys, have proved durable. And sung by over a thousand people, it became transcendent.
If Yoshimi was the catharsis, then the second set of the night was a party. It began with the absurd hit “She Don’t Use Jelly,” which let the band release several balls into the audience that exploded into confetti when they popped. It proceeded through a series of rockers from several other albums, and ended with the first two songs from The Soft Bulletin — “Race for the Prize” and “A Spoonful Weighs a Ton” — that returned the band, and the audience, to the place of positivity, openness, and sincere beauty that it had visited in the first set. As he said he did at every show, Coyne thanked the audience for being the best audience he could imagine.
“You smile, you laugh, you care for each other,” he said. “You give so much love.”
Super fun and however deeply the Lips can sink into the depths of morosity, Wayne knows how to keep it optimistic.
This made up for my deep disappointment that the Beth's phoned in a short set at the National concert (headed to a gig in Pittsburgh). They should have been the headliner IMHO.