Four years since Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robot, the Flaming Lips have returned with At War with the Mystics, a quirky, experimental and enjoyable, if faulty, album. At War with the Mystics has all the traditional charms that fans have come to adore, with enough punch to win over new listeners, but the album is definitely lacking in certain areas, particularly in the melody department.
The opening track, "The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song ... (With All Your Power)" sounds like Paul Simon's "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard" processed like crazy in a studio environment. The second track, "Free Radicals," also has this running undertone of studio experimentation.
Random voices, clicks and beeps weave in and out of the song as a crunching guitar riff carries the listener through to the end. These two songs set the tone for the album. It is evident that the Flaming Lips were definitely focused on expanding their sonic landscape as far as they could while still holding on to traditional song structure. The album almost sounds like an audio tour of some bizarre, magical world inhabited only by the Flaming Lips and these humming and beeping creatures who drop in just to say hello. At War with the Mystics is better suited for listening to straight through, rather than an album which can have singles plucked out for pop-chart fodder.
The slight-conceptual approach to this album, of course, is not a bad thing. The song writing may not be as strong as the technical mastery of the sound, but if people only looked for good song-writing, then rock and roll would never have utilized the guitar solo. There are definitely merits to the complex oddities of the bedlam the Flaming Lips make, and there are certain spots which are genuinely very catchy, such as track seven's "It overtakes me" reprise. At War with the Mystics may not be a necessity for your album collection, but it is without a doubt a genuine treat.
