When The Flaming Lips come to town, you can count on a party. They chose an interesting new band, Klangstof, as their opener. Just off their Coachella debut, the indie Dutch band played a mix of reverb-heavy, guitar-centric songs and ambient-groove synth tunes. Frontman Koen van de Wardt came off as humble and appreciative of any and all the love from Seattle’s crowd. As their set neared its end, the eclectic crowd grew larger — and louder.
When the lights went down and The Flaming Lips finally took the stage, it didn’t take long for the weird and wonderful show to take off. Singer and Lips ringleader Wayne Coyne came out and conducted his quirky ensemble, raising his hands to ask them for more, more! And then he began to conduct the crowd, asking for louder and louder applause. What could we do but happily give in to him? Soon, he was dashing back and forth across the stage, launching massive balloons into the crowd and shooting off confetti to “Race For the Prize.” Next, three large balloon creatures joined the band on stage for “Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots, Pt 1,” and the rumors of Coyne riding a unicorn were confirmed for their third song of the night, appropriately “There Should Be Unicorns.” A large horse statue, in a rainbow wig and with a horn affixed to its head, was pushed and pulled across the stage and down into the crowd with a rainbow-winged Coyne on its back.
The night continued with more visual candy, including an inflatable rainbow and a Flaming Lips favorite of Coyne walking out onto the crowd in his human-sized hamster ball to cover Bowie’s “Space Oddity.” Surprisingly, they played only three songs off the new album, Oczy Mlody, relying instead on material off of 1999’s The Soft Bulletin.
Attending a Flaming Lips show is a little like going to the circus: full of sound, lights, and sheer sensory overload. Coyne and his merry men once again made sure this night was something magical, exciting, and joyful, everything we could use more of these days.