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Review: Flaming Lips at Austin Music Hall
Flaming Lips singer Wayne Coyne on Friday night at the Austin Music Hall. Photo by Jordan Smothermon/AUSTIN-AMERICAN STATESMAN
Not 10 minutes into the Flaming Lips show Friday at Austin Music Hall, the five members of the Oklahoma psych-rock group had reached such a fever pitch with the sold-out crowd that the show could have ended there and people would have left satisfied.
More confetti was strewn about than at a Super Bowl celebration. Numerous white, orange and yellow inflatable balls were dispatched into the audience. Strobe lights flickered in pandemonium. Dozens of dancers, flanking both sides of the stage in neon orange and fuzzy conehead hats, danced and pumped their fists. And smoke machines made thick, thick fog.
Frontman Wayne Coyne was already in his signature clear blow-up bubble, risking limbs and lungs traversing the upraised arms of the crowd. Santa, Dorothy and the Tin Man were among those helping. Indeed, the full spectrum of the scene was a riot—exhilarating no matter your first or 100th time.
“We’ve played some of our greatest shows in Austin,” Coyne would later say, after finishing up that intro song, “Enthusiasm for Life Defeats Existential Fear.” He recalled one with the Butthole Surfers at the defunct Ritz theater and one at SXSW in ‘99.
The new Lips album, “Embryonic,” is dense and sprawling. It takes a bunch of listens to attempt to comprehend. So as not to alienate their fair weather fans any more than they already have with it, the Lips tucked mediocre numbers “Worm Mountain” and “Silver Trembling Hands” into the show’s initial thrust and later on wisely showcased the album’s jams, “See the Leaves” and “Convinced of the Hex.”
Outside of that the Lips played singalong hits like “The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song,” “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots,” and “She Don’t Use Jelly,” which they said they play almost every single show. Coyne proved himself a consummate showman throughout, facilitating his props with the mastery of a magician. At one point, during the song “Waitin’ for a Superman,” he wound up a mechanical dove and, wings flapping, waved it through the air.
Coyne said the song was dedicated to musician Mark Linkous (aka Sparklehorse), who earlier this month committed suicide. He said the Lips had played it a lot when they were touring with Elliott Smith, another musician who had committed suicide. He said the song was about “making your own happiness.”
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