May 23, 2000

London South Bank Royal Festival Hall

...all bands should ride the tornado like this. Over the rainbow. Over the moon. ..

Nobody could have imagined that the Yellow Brick Road would lead this far. Here we are, whirled away by a symphonic tornado and planted slap-bang in the middle of this Technicolor euphoria, when everyone knows true alterno-rock is meant to be a black-and-white public service announcement about the dangers of smiling. It was never supposed to be about gongs and glitter and glove puppets. Film projections showing the healing power of children weren't part of the plan. And certainly, pretty little bluebirds never flew within a beak's width of the equation.

Clearly, The Flaming Lips skipped that class. "This song," announces Wayne Coyne, with all the sincerity of a man who has long since cut free his inhibitions like a net full of helium balloons, "this song is the most beautiful song a human can sing." As a sampled Judy Garland, wide-eyed at the sheer wonder of it all, appears onscreen to blink and stutter behind him, Coyne sings, "Somewhere over the rainbow...".

Forget grown men weeping - even the concrete hulk of the South Bank is seen pretending it's just got something in its eye as sentiment spills through the cracks in the singer's voice. The Flaming Lips' newly ingrained philosophy of human development - small creatures scuttling over a ridiculous planet yet capable of magic - is one that allows for no irony and no cynicism. So when Coyne sings of the land that he dreams of, nobody smirks; they just dream along too.

This, then, is progress, on a night devoted to it. The show is part of noble independent label City Slang's tenth birthday celebrations, and although the Lips took the major's dollar long ago, they were the impulse behind the company's conception. With admirable determination, founder Cristof Ellinghaus started the project because he wanted to release their records; tonight's show is an excellent tribute.

It's appropriate, too, that they should play with current City Slang bands spliced with a speck of their genetic material. Boston's Wheat - unhappily plagued by the word 'underrated' - mail out postcards from Americana's haziest edges, clinging to their portable compendium of humanity, US mythologies and quiet beauty to help them float in the vast space. Built To Spill, meanwhile, despite Neil-Young-in-a-haystack sartorial stylings, just streamline their power; only licking an electricity pylon would give you more insight into high-voltage physics than 'Virginia Reel Around The Fountain', and that's before the jolt from realising, hell, Doug Martsch actually speaks like he sings.

For the quantum leap, however, you've got to have a gong. From the opening 'Race For The Prize', heartstring-zinging ebullience made to have you swinging round trolley cars and doing the show right here, to the closing 'When You Smile' - last notes drawn out like they expect bouquets to fall at their feet - The Flaming Lips are in buoyantly theatrical mood. With fidelity so high it's up in the sky, a sound that passes through ambitious and into the realms of the delusional, they'd always be striking; pick any song at random - the synapse-jangle of 'Slow Nerve Action', or the human percussion of 'Feeling Yourself Disintegrate' - and that's clear. What's particularly obvious tonight, though, is how the release of 'The Soft Bulletin' LP coincided with the unleashing of their inner psychedelic drama queen.

They've always rummaged though their mental attics looking for psychological scraps to weave into songs, but it's only recently that they've started using them as dressing-up box. As Coyne smiles and bows and duets with his nun puppet, this orchestral space makes it clearer than ever that, heroically, they've sent their aesthetic frisking down a path that would terrify lesser bands. Poignant hope-opera 'Waitin' For A Superman' and heliotrope whirl 'What Is The Light?' are almost lysergic Broadway, while 'She Don't Use Jelly' - "The cool thing bands do is not play the hit, but we like to make as big a deal of it as possible" - sees armfuls of balloons released, as Coyne throws handfuls of glitter over the front row. You can't help noticing most of it lands on him.

It's never superficial, never shallow, just scratching through dreary grey film stock to find the positive image beneath. That all bands should ride the tornado like this. Over the rainbow. Over the moon.

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