T.F.L. were a giant, flaming disappointment. Two respected musicians (my Memphis cousin Robbie and my Chaminade friend Tom) swore by the band, saying their Lips concerts were the best concerts they had ever been to. I understand where they were coming from in the sense that it was an intense experience, but I could not say it was an enjoyable one.
I could not recognize almost any of the Lips’ songs, despite having listened to their entire discography. The sounds and visuals also never seemed to cohere. Usually, if I wrote about a concert “most extreme sounds/visuals ever,” that would be a good thing. (See Rise Against, Smashing Pumpkins.) This felt different though. It made me uncomfortable: like, at any moment, it seemed the band would invite someone on stage to be burned alive – and the crowd would cackle in glee at what it just saw.
The Lips kept trying to encourage drug use, but I feel like that would have made it worse. The swirling ash clouds and the blinding stage lamps were scary enough sober; I can’t imagine how scary they would have been high! The stage lamps literally hurt my eyes at one point; I had to stare back down at my seat. The mingling scents of pot and cap guns (?!) didn’t help matters.
There remain a number of Flaming Lips songs I really like: “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots,” “She Don’t Use Jelly,” and “Do You Realize??” And it was not as if every moment of the show was miserable. “Nobody's Fault But My Own” had a cool White Stripes guitar riff, and “Silver Trembling Hands” had a cool crescendo -- slowly but surely taking the audience up its rainbow mountain.
Overall, though, it did not seem like a mountain I would want to scale again…
Grade: C-
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