The Flaming Lips make colourful UK live comeback

The Flaming Lips kicked off their first UK tour for three years in Edinburgh last night (April 19) surrounded by Santas and scientologist ninjas!

The band played the Usher Hall, and frontman Wayne Coyne began proceedings by floating across the crowd in a giant bubble. Although he had previously done this at 2004’s Coachella festival and down an Austin street at last month’s SXSW, he revealed this was the first time he had performed the stunt indoors.

Coyne also explained that the Santas were there to represent the Christian church, the ninjas were the scientologists and the band, in the middle, were the voice of reason.

The Flaming Lips, on a stage filled with balloons and streamers, finished their set with a cover of Black Sabbath’s ‘War Pigs’, with the video screen behind showing up images of US President George W Bush and his Secretary Of State Condoleezza Rice.

The band played:

‘Race For The Prize’
‘Free Radicals’
‘Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots (Pt 1)’
‘Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots (Pt 2)’
‘Vein Of Stars’
‘In the Morning Of The Magicians’
‘The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song’
‘The WAND’
‘The Spark That Bled’
‘She Don’t Use Jelly’
‘Do You Realize?’
‘War Pigs’

The tour moves on to London’s Royal Albert Hall this Saturday (April 22).

To read an exclusive interview with Wayne Coyne about what rock’n’roll has taught him, get this weeks’ NME, dated April 22, on newsstands nationwide now.