There’s no show quite like a Flaming Lips show. Each performance is a spectacular, ridiculous, kaleidoscopic, dayglo extravaganza, full of more inflatables than a funfair. 20-foot-high pink robots, huge colourful balls bouncing around the crowd, two people dressed as gigantic dancing eyeballs, and lead singer Wayne Coyne in an orb standing on top of the crowd. It’s sensory overload, and at times tonight the courtyard of Somerset House can barely contain it.
Tonight’s show sees them perform a set of era-defining tracks, split into two halves. Coyne seems in awe of the venue: “I must acknowledge this is one of the most spectacular places you can play in the world. After 44 years this is the most magnificent place - there’s pirates buried over there!”
Coyne's Banter and Stage Presence
Coyne is on good form - though his constant cajoling of the crowd to cheer more sometimes feels like he’s chastising them. He talks for five minutes on the virtue of the lids attached to plastic drinks bottles in Europe. He tells the crowd there’s someone on the front row attending their 91st Lips show. And he lets them know that “we’ll play till they shut the square down and throw us off the stage - you can leave if you want.”
All the gimmicks can sometimes feel like they’re hiding the fact the band have lost some of their magic - especially since Steven Drozd, the former co-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, left the band in 2024 - but from the moment they play “Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots” second up, it’s clear this career-spanning set is full of warmth and heart.
Set Highlights and Emotional Moments
He puts on a Wonder Woman costume for their beguiling, tender cover of Daniel Johnston’s “True Love Will Find You in the End”. Their version of “The Golden Path” - a 2003 track Coyne made with the Chemical Brothers - complete with dancing inflatable sun, feels like a fever dream.
After a 15-minute break, the second half of the show sees them play a life-affirming “Race for the Prize”, a gloriously ramshackle, riotous “She Don’t Use Jelly”, and ends with “A Spoonful Weighs a Ton” and its beautiful lesson about grief (Coyne earlier chokes up when he tells the crowd his older brother died 11 days ago).
Yet, it’s the climax of the first set which is the emotive pinnacle of the show as “All We Have Is Now” segues into a joyfully existential “Do You Realize??” with the crowd’s hands aloft. “We have to make this moment the real moment,” Coyne tells the crowd. “To appreciate what’s happening right now and look to the future.” As yet one more inflatable starts to slowly rise - a huge rainbow this time - he looks out at the crowd: “Don’t wait for a rainbow, bring your own.” It’s sage advice - and, in a way, also serves as a mission statement for the Flaming Lips’ philosophy. Bringing their own rainbow is something they do with every show; literally and metaphorically.
