Eventim Apollo, Hammersmith
"The test begins now..."
Wayne Coyne's illustrious entourage ushered in their equally colourful facade to Hammersmith's Apollo, celebrating the recent anniversary of their seminal LP, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots.
And thus began the test placed upon us this Friday night in Hammersmith, inciting a metaphysical transportation to 20 years prior when the renowned psych-rock act unleashed one of the most seminal records at the turn of the century. How would we collectively fare?
Lined against the throngs of now middle-aged fathers, and their children, ‘Fight Test’ initiated a roar of family-fuelled approval over the ethereal psychedelia reminiscent from the likes of Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here or The Beatles’ Revolver. Yet as this test began, The Flaming Lips’ frontman Wayne Coyne, encased inside his singular inflated bubble, seemed imminently diminished against the hazy atmosphere, his vocals drowning within a sea of etherealism and nostalgia towards the turn-of-the-century revision of psychedelia that was once embedded in the larger landscape of rock.
As both acts of the LP’s title track played out, four larger-than-life pink robots suddenly amassed on stage - eventually inflated by the frantically ubiquitous crew members orchestrating a myriad of gadgets and instruments behind the scenes. Even in the face of Coyne’s continually hushed vocals which paled in comparison to his entourage, these bells and whistles did their subliminal best to distract, keeping the crowd engaged, enticed and enthralled amidst the bulk of The Flaming Lips’ heavyweight LP.
The pinnacle of their LP’s stirring test ultimately arrived at the timeless single, ‘Do You Realize??’, containing an anthemic chorus baked into Coyne’s inquisitively existential questioning. Playing us out of this masterfully-crafted album from 20 years gone, the crowd rapturously revelled in this test, forever sandwiched between glutenous layers of ethereal reverb and nauseating delay, offered by this long-awaited rendition from a seismic era of psychedelic rock.
For the subsequent tracks which took shape tonight, predominantly from 1999’s The Soft Bulletin and 2020’s American Head, it’s all too testing to articulate their effect - particularly still reeling from what took place moments ago. ‘Will You Return / Will You Come Down?’ and ‘Feeling Yourself Disintegrate’ respectively yet offered their comedown capabilities with a softened, consoling approach on the crowd, ensuring a gradual descent from the ethereal heights of the Yoshimi test.
It was the finale track, however, which tipped this evening’s homogenous collectivism into a bombastic foray into Wayne Coyne’s box of toys and gadgets. Confetti guns, monolithic flags, swaying lights, bubble machines, gargantuan balloons, dangling disco balls, concluded by an inflated “Fuck yeah London” sign held aloft by the frontman, brought The Flaming Lips’ chaotic return to the stage to a close. To what end these toys furthered the plot of tonight’s set still remains to be anyone’s guess.
Lost in the overindulgence of their arsenal of weapons to hand, The Flaming Lips nevertheless incited an us-against-them mantra, a call-to-action if you will, for the sold-out crowd in Hammersmith’s historic Apollo. As Coyne recalls in their finale track “Theirs is to win if it kills them / They’re just humans with wives and children”, one noticeably felt the throng of middle-aged parents and their offspring grow closer on this testing yet hedonistic Friday night - faring us all the better into the weekend’s inception which suddenly sprang upon us.
7/10
The Flaming Lips' latest LP, American Head, is out via Bella Union and can be found below.
Photos is courtesy of Melanie Smith whose work can be found here.
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