The Flaming Lips: At War With the Mystics

I can see why people were disappointed with At War With the Mystics. Not that it's a bad album, but it's not the album critics wanted. By the time YouTube reached it's eleven hundredth video of Wayne Coyne walking over the audience in that hamster ball, the Lips' psychedelic space freakout sound was way too popular with the non-musical fantics that the only what the Lips could appease its fans would be to release an audience killing fuzzy psychadelic guitar pop album the kind it used to make in the early 90s (this goes same for Radiohead). And when The Wand was released last January, it seemed like it would be just that. But, like Woody Allen, the Lips ended up making the album they wanted to make, whether their fans like it or not. My Cosmic Autumn Rebellion is a good example of the non-The Wand songs on the album. Radiohead have been fighting off the Pink Floyd comparisons for years, but if any band warrants the comparison, it's the Lips. At War With the Mystics is a soft album, sacrificing big hooks (except on a few tracks) for melodic expansiveness, which is weird, because much of the album is taken up by political fight songs. It's good music to dream to.