Live Review: The Flaming Lips, Manchester Academy (22/01/17)

With the release of their 14th studio album ‘Oczy Mlody’ on 13th January, the Flaming Lips embarked on their journey from the USA to Europe for their 10 date European tour.

For me, the Flaming Lips were always one of those bands that my dad had mentioned and played when I was growing up but had never really listened to them. This was until I was lucky enough to inherit my dad’s ‘Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots’ t-shirt in 2014, from their tour in 2003 (vintage).

With their music being described as ‘lush, multi-layered, psychedelic rock arrangements’ they have a distinctive sound and are therefore very interesting to listen to. I was lucky enough to get tickets to see them for Christmas, so on Sunday 22nd January (oh yes, a school night), my dad and I set off for Manchester, one of their two English dates for the tour, with the other being in London.

Having never been to the Manchester Academy, I was quite shocked by the size as it was quite large compared the venues I’m used to, however I was assured by my dad that it was perfect for the Flaming lips, who he claims are the ‘Best live Band ever’. Naturally I was intrigued and quite excited.

The support was an artist called Georgia (@georgiadrumming) who sang and played drums (very impressively) along with Hinako Omori (@hinakohl) who played keys and used different synthesizers. Together there was a unique and refreshing sound, the rowdy quick drumming and electronic sounds was an enjoyable listening experience. Although not the type of music that I’d normally listen to, it was a really good experience seeing them and I can definitely see them being very successful in the future.

The stage was lit head to toe in multi coloured lights before the band even came on. They opened their set with ‘race for the prize’, which in my opinion was a good opener and a brilliant atmosphere was built up in the crowd. During the first song, around 50 giant spherical balloons were released into the audience, and were being bounced around through the crowd. In addition to this quirky and very stylish front man ‘Wayne Coyne’ was drowning the crowd in multi coloured confetti throughout the whole gig, I’d never seen this level of interaction during a whole gig before let alone in the first song.

During the transition into the iconic ‘Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots part 1’ a huge balloon structure saying "Fuck yeah Manchester" was released into the crowd along with the huge that were still being bounced around the crowd, and continued to right until the end of the gig. One of the high points of the gig for me was when Wayne Coyne climbed into a giant transparent zorbing ball, and sung a magical cover of Bowie’s 'Space Oddity'.

With the majority of the audience belting their hearts out, Wayne Coyne travelled on top of the audience in this giant zorbing ball with them supporting his weight. Getting this close to him was pretty cool! Afterwards he said a beautiful tribute to David Bowie. Another highlight for me was when Wayne came out on stage riding a very large white unicorn covered in lights that matched all the lights that were on stage. This was during ‘there should be unicorns’ which is from their new album, they played a few more songs off ‘Oczy Mlody’ including single ‘The Castle’ which all sounded really good.

With the amazing stage show, audience interaction with the audience and enthusiasm from both the band and crowd, I would have to say that the Flaming lips are up there with my favourite gigs. Q Magazine might have put the Flaming Lips in their ‘top 50 live bands to see’ category, however I might have to agree with my dad on this one.