Album Review - The Flaming Lips - At War with the Mystics
John Metzger
Wayne Coyne, the mastermind behind The Flaming Lips, always has had a
lot on his mind, but even by his standards, he's working overtime on the
band's eleventh studio outing At War with the Mystics. Turning his
attention to a broader array of worldly issues, he forsakes the thematic
rumination upon mortality that bound together The Soft Bulletin as well
as Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots' science-fiction-imbued storyline
about post-9/11 fear. Instead, what he offers is a more loosely-knit
collection of songs that ponders such notions as personal responsibility
(The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song), the superficiality of pop culture (The Sound
of Failure), and the current clash of religious fanaticism (Free
Radicals). As the set tumbles towards the inevitable conclusion that is
captured on its final trilogy of tunes (The W.A.N.D., Pompeii Am
Götterdaämmerung, and Goin' On), it becomes abundantly clear that
Coyne's end goal is to awaken mankind from its apathetic slumber and
inspire a populist uprising. Essentially, he now is trying to save the
world from itself -- or, at the very least, from the corporate greed
that seemingly surrounds George W. Bush's presidency.
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