Kids get crafty when fighting for attention. Oklahoma City lifer Wayne Coyne grew up with five siblings, so the showboating singer desperately craves an audience. Thirty years into their career, his band the Flaming Lips are now more like a bombastic traveling circus than a rock band.
“We’re almost ready,” began Coyne. “Just one more mushroom.”
Clad in frog attire, the bandleader, 54, accompanied giant inflatable fungi and a Lucky Charms-like rainbow onstage as Clouds Taste Metallic’s “The Abandoned Hospital Ship” commenced the headliners’ Sunday night set. Their stage bedazzled like an acid-warped VeggieTales, as confetti-filled balloons bopped along the crowd. An exhilarating visual, the spectacle overload detracted from the music at times.
Eventually, Soft Bulletin cut “Feeling Yourself Disintegrate” kicked antics aside, briefly allowing music front-and-center. Yoshimi beauty “In the Morning of the Magicians” felt similarly poignant. Later, “Vein of Stars” returned Coyne’s infamous transparent hamster bubble, the frontman crawling atop fans whilst singing.
The longtime festival vets unquestionably dish an intoxicating performance, but they’ve no new tricks. It’s admittedly hard not to revel in the band’s creative trappings. Those searching for more music and less The Greatest Show on Earth, however — or those who’ve simply already witnessed the band’s recurring live M.O. too many times — may have retreated early.
That camp missed out on upper outro “Do You Realize??” Miraculously, Sunday’s daunting thunderstorm forecast never delivered. Coyne, too, noticed.
“This has been the perfect day,” he beamed. “The perfect fucking day. And we love you guys so, so much.”
This article appears in May 8 • 2015.