Concert Review: The Flaming Lips at The Riviera Theater, Chicago

There will be confetti...and balloons.

The Flaming Lips

The Riviera Theater, Chicago

April 17, 2017

The Flaming Lips are touring to support their latest album, a psychedelic electronic effort that was conceived after the band’s work as Miley Cyrus' backing band. “Oczy Mlody,” another evolutionary step away from the band’s long-forgotten art punk days, is a mostly mellow, drugged-out exploration of trippy themes, one that a listener would expect not to play well live.

Wayne Coyne astride a unicorn.

The band apparently knew this, too, and only played three new songs amid the 18-song, two-and-a-half hour set in front of a sold-out crowd. “How??” was the best conceived “Oczy Mlody” song in concert, with “The Castle” a dud eliciting relatively zero crowd reaction or enthusiasm--a rarity for a band that approaches each song as an event itself. The band added a dramatic visual to “There Should Be Unicorns”: singer Wayne Coyne--wearing inflatable wings, pink day-glo finger nail polish and  a blinged-out dollar sign pendant around his neck--was wheeled through the crowd on a unicorn prop, much to the crowd’s delight. Juxtapose that image with the more mundane one of bassist Michael Ivins tastefully wearing a Chicago Blackhawks sweater, barely moving from his back corner spot on stage.

Inflatables, in fact, are a theme at Lips’ concerts: there were actors wearing inflatable star and catfish costumes, as well as stationary mushrooms (some of them blocking the view of the stage) and rainbow inflatables. The crowd was also bombed from above with the requisite confetti and balloons, and a web of programmable LED lights hung over the stage. A visualizer screen swirled in the background of the stage, almost like an afterthought amid the other visuals demanding attention.

Coyne travels above the fray for "Space Oddity."

After the uplifting opener “Race For The Prize,” singer Wayne Coyne held up a massive balloon that spelled out “Fuck yeah Chicago!” before offering it to the crowd as a sacrifice that quickly got torn apart.

One third of the songs of the set were from the band’s breakthrough effort “The Soft Bulletin.” Songs including “Feeling Yourself Disintegrate,” “A Spoonful Weighs A Ton” and “Waitin’ For Superman” (played during the second encore) were crowd favorites. On “What Is The Light?”, Coyne played his deliberate, plodding guitar solo under the inflatable rainbow that was only used for that exact moment. It was an intimate moment in a night of outrageousness.

But the band’s faithful rendition of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” was the most thrilling moment. Coyne sung his parts inside an inflatable clear ball, held suspended in the air by the part of the sold out crowd that was mashed together front-and-center. Coyne channeling Bowie’s spaceman persona in a hamster ball: the most authentic gimmick of the show.

Link to my full review of the Lips' album "Oczy Mlody."