Real Flamers
The fact that no one flinched when The Flaming Lips released the first single to The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie in 2004-a bubble-heavy track called "SpongeBob and Patrick Confront the Psychic Wall of Energy"-proves the strength of the pure rays of concentrated joy the band continues to subsist on.
Of course, around the same time, the band was busily recording the track, "Vaginal Holocaust" for the soundtrack to their own (still) forthcoming dystopian space-holiday movie, Christmas on Mars. (This is a project frontman Wayne Coyne has been diligently working on in his Oklahoma driveway for the better part of a decade.)
Both of these events occurred in the wake of a two-year tour starring the band and a rotating cast of fans dressed as fuzzy animals promoting a concept album about a Japanese girl protecting mankind from an army of robots in the distant future, the band's biggest success since the days of promoting "She Don't Use Jelly" (still hands-down one of the band's lamest tracks after a two--decade long recording career) on 90210.
The first two songs issued ahead of At War With the Mystics (due out next week) are pretty much like everything the band does-a study in contrasts. "Mr. Ambulance Driver," first issued, oddly enough, on the soundtrack to The Wedding Crashers, is a subdued narrative unfolding at the scene of a crash, the narrator cradling a dying woman in his arms. The iTunes exclusive, "The W.A.N.D.," is possibly the most rocking track the group has released in a decade, which seems to involve dismantling the Bush administration with a "tricked out magic stick" that may or may not be the Constitution. Whatever it is, there's little doubt that it'll be fun to watch the band whip it out.