The Year In Review:

A look back at some of our favorite memories and show notes from The Flaming Lips 2025 world tour.

September 4:
The Greek Theater, Los Angles California

Just outside the Greek Theater in the Hollywood hills above the City of Angels, a parade of joyful souls stroll away into the night.

Amidst the usual sights and sounds of screaming bootleg merch merchants, the hurried freaks frantically searching for a ride home, or friends looking for the lost member of their group, the laughs and smiles seem to melt together under a waxing gibbous moon. There is the one guy holding on tightly to a stop sign to stay upright. For it appears that if this poor guy goes down, down he will stay.

Music critics are everywhere this night too; their show notes, insights and theories swing wildly from the silly to the beautiful about the performances by Dehd, Modest Mouse and The Flaming Lips.

But it was that last act that kept the euphoria alive through a dark walk amongst the historic Hollywoodland homes.

“Dooooo Yoooouuuu Reeeeaaaaalize,” one person sings as they stroll with their arms held high. “I fucking love that song!”

“Wayne’s been their lead singer for like over 20 years now,” one young fan confirms to a friend.

The debate over the set list and its mixture of songs from albums like Transmissions of the Satellite Heart to In A Priest Driven Ambulance to The Soft Bulletin was also stirring in one group before one woman loudly proclaims “I’m sorry but those guys in the eyeball suits are sexy.”

She’s not wrong.

“What were those pink blowup things?”, on stage one young woman asks.

“Those are the pink robots!” her friend responds.

As the crowd meanders along Griffith Park, a blacked out Escalade crashes into a row of trash cans as one young man screams in his direction “oh Yoshimi, what’s wrong with that guy!”

But what was the message, the feeling boiling just underneath it all?

That what they had witnessed, The Flaming Lips, was truly mind blowing.

“I had no idea,” one bewildered man said before a woman nearby quickly replies: “yeah man, they’re good.”

It was obvious from the start of the second half of the 2025 summer tour the band is here to keep it simple, and have fun.

Simply plug in, turn it up, and play music freely with your friends. The smiles on stage seemed to confirm this, the smiles in the crowd validated it all as the band delivered one to remember in Los Angeles.

The Greek Theater, Los Angles California

Sleeping on the roof
Yoshimi battles the pink robots PT 1
Yoshimi battles the pink robots PT 2
Turn it on
Pompeii Am Götterdämmerung
Five Stop Mother Superior Rain
The Golden Path
Feeling Yourself Disintegrate
The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song (With All Your Power)
She Don’t Use Jelly
Do You Realize??

War Pigs
Race for the prize

A good number fans in all the venues in California were perplexed, some even a bit uneasy, that Modest Mouse was ahead of the Lips on the bill.

Perhaps these feelings were a result of the proximity to the home region of Modest Mouse, or the level of familiarity of one fan group to a band over another. Either way many Mouse fans in attendance admitted they had never seen the Lips live in concert before.

Some Mouse fans even packed up and headed for the exits following their set, while nearby Lips fans yelled “don’t go, you’re missing out!” One guy replies, “sorry, gotta work in the morning.”

Lame.

During a VIP meet-in-greet in Berkeley, Issac Brock was asked by a fan about the line-up during an impromptu jam session before the doors opened.

“We can not follow The Flaming Lips,” Brock told the small crowd.

“Their entire set are finales.”

Each 75-minute Lips set started off the same, and only starts following a thumbs up from Zach to Aaron at the board. A scantly lit screen with the sounds of insects on what sounds like a warm summer evening plays for a few minutes as members of the band walk onto stage under blue light.

The insects and a faint passing train horn fills the audience. Conversations wrap up, phones and curious stares now directed at the stage as each member holds their position quietly.

Derek then breaks the lull on the piano with crisp, firm chords, his eyes closed, before AJ joins on his Casio guitar for the opening performance of Sleeping On The Roof.

This opening instrumental — though wordless — conveys a sense of wonder tinged with melancholy, fitting The Soft Bulletin’s themes of mortality, beauty and fragility. Sleeping On The Roof is truly an atmospheric epilogue, a gentle fade into the cosmos that lingers like the afterglow of a profound dream.

Following this song, Wayne then takes the stage to begin parts one and two of Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. For those in the audience for their first Lips show, the looks on their faces are priceless.

For the members of the audience who haven’t seen the band in decades, their preconceived ideas of a live Lips show based on their past experiences, are thrown out the window.

This is not even close to the same band once seen decades ago.

When Wayne asks for screams from the audience, the audience returns them. It’s a neat sign that the greater audience itself is very much paying attention because, how can you not.

The setlist then dips back into time with Turn It On, the first song on Transmissions. This garage-psych tune with guitars drenched in fuzz and distortion is an uplifting groove with lyrics suggesting both a plea and escape.

The power never surrenders as the group then moves into Pompeii Am Götterdämmerung, a jam of scorched-earth psychedelia that washes over the audience.

When Wayne wants people to scream, Pompeii turns on all the senses to do so.

The arrangement, vast and destructive, mirrors the build up and sonic collapse through equal parts volcanic eruption and end-times carnival. The music ends, the lights dim with the vocal harmonies as Wayne then begins to swing a light around himself in the darkness. The light barely illuminates the stage and front few rows of the audience as fragile, rhythmic tones come from the band. The entire combination of dim light moving with the tones creates a near trance-like effect over the audience until Wayne moves the light faster and faster until the light collapses completely.

This unknown period of time, nicknamed by fans as the “outro of Pompeii,”  has become a regular feature in recent shows, it’s also a welcome, unscripted period of music in-between songs.

Back to the early 1990s the set list returns with Five Stop Mother Superior Rain from the album In A Priest Driven Ambulance. A hauntingly emotional song not widely played in previous years has become regular in 2025 to the delight of fans.

Wayne directs the audience to AJ as he breaks open his incredible pedal steel contributions to the song while harmonies break out both on stage and in the audience.

Adding this song in 2025 has filled desires from many fans for the band to add more older songs into the performance rotation. The power and meaning behind Five Stop Mother Superior Rain has regained relevance in today’s current climate. The song feels both cosmic and intimate, like a prayer drifting through distortion. The song has a sense of yearning, exhaustion, and surrender — something between desperation and transcendence.

The subdued nature following Five Stop Mother Superior Rain is then lifted back into a sustained groove as Wayne becomes wrapped up in the sun, and the band moves onto The Golden Path, the single from the band’s 2003 collaboration with The Chemical Brothers.

The result of this incredible collaboration has been a collision of rave energy and psychedelic storytelling set to a pulsating beat and shimmering synths. The Golden Path is like a fever dream, turning into a spiritual awakening, that has had audiences worldwide grooving.

Summer tour shows also featured The Soft Bulletin’s Feeling Yourself Disintegrate, a song that carries a heavy, bittersweet sadness. Before playing it, Wayne spoke to the audience about the heaviness of life and reminding people of the good things in our daily lives, like love, the people we all care about, and holding on no matter how grave the world appears.  

The song’s power confronts mortality head-on, but instead of being purely grim, it feels tender, compassionate, and accepting. Feeling Yourself Disintegrate feels mournful, but also strangely comforting, like a lullaby for letting go.

Continuing northbound to the Pacific Northwest, the band performed The Soft Bulletin in its entirety on the Lips’ second night at the Psychic Salamander Festival in Carnation Washington.

September 14:
The Psychic Salamander Fest

Sleeping on the roof
Yoshimi battles the pink robots PT 1
Yoshimi battles the pink robots PT 2
Turn it on
Pompeii Am Götterdämmerung

The Soft Bulletin

Race for the Prize
A Spoonful Weighs a Ton
The Spark That Bled
The Spiderbite Song
Buggin’
What Is The Light
The Observer
Waitin’ for Superman
Suddenly Everything Has Changed
The Gash
Feeling Yourself Disintegrate
Sleeping On The Roof

Following the Salamander festival, the band had two final summer tour stops in Bonner Montana, and at the Ogden Twilight Series in Ogden Utah. Although the band appeared tired, they delivered powerful sets with drippings from The Soft Bulletin sprinkled throughout mixed with The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song, She Don’t Use Jelly, Do You Realize?? with War Pigs and Race for the Prize for encores.

In the audience were Santa, a.k.a Alan Bass, and Chris Matteson, two previous participants of this newsletter’s fan interview series.

The band has one final appearance this fall on Saturday, October 4, at the Mempho Music Festival in Memphis Tennessee appearing with Father John Misty, Tyler Childers, The Pharcyde, Mavis Staples, Charley Crockett, Widespread Panic, Sierra Ferrell, Galactic, Lucero, and more.

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January 2025:

The band opens the 2025 World Tour in Australia.

The Flaming Lips open their 2025 campaign with ‘Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots’ from the Adelaide Entertainment Centre Theatre in Adelaide, South Australia.

The show left some fans stunned as to why Steven Drozd wasn’t at the gig. Online speculation swung wildly regarding his absence.

Either way, AJ Slaughter fills in for Steven and the group dropped notable favorites like “Riding To Work In The Year 2025,” that song’s first performance since 2013, and “Christmas at the Zoo” which was performed during both nights of the 2024 Summer Freak Out at the OKC Zoo.

March 2025:

April: 2025:

Band begins European Tour in U.K!

After a decade, the band and crew bring back the “Golden Path” for excited fans across Ireland and the U.K.

RELATED: THE GOLDEN COLLABORATION

Following an incredible “Do You Realize” where thousands inside the 02 Academy in Brixton joined Wayne in singing along, Wayne was overcome with emotion proclaiming the love from the room brought him to tears.

AJ Slaughter’s Petal Steel guitar addition during “True Love Will Find you in the end” brings an incredible touch to a touching tribute to Daniel Johnston while adding beautiful layers to the Lips’ sound on many other songs.

May 2025:

The band and crew begin the second leg of their 2025 European Vacation starting in Belgium and concluding with a pair of music festivals in Portugal and Spain towards the middle of June.

Some of the stops on this tour include incredibly beautiful venues, each with their own character. From the Le Trianon in Paris, a venue that carries historic charm with two-rows of balconies similar to the Olympic Theater in Dublin, to the new modern architecture of the Tempodrom in Berlin that looks like something from a dream, with the entire concert hall built circular — including the seating chart — which gives the feel that this place was created to celebrate the world of live music.

Other venues like the Vega in Copenhagen, or the TivoliVredenburg in the Netherlands appear to be smaller, more intimate spaces, perfect for audiences to to feel the spoonfuls of love, love, love from the band.

We will all be waiting to see all the amazing pictures and videos posted from these shows.

The Flaming Lips at De Roma
Borgerhout Belguim, May 30

Fight Test
One More Robot/Sympathy 3000-21
Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Pt. 1 & 2
In the Morning of the Magicians
Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell
Are You a Hypnotist??
It’s Summertime
Do You Realize??
All We Have Is Now
Approaching Pavonis Mons by Balloon (Utopia Planitia)

She Don’t Use Jelly
Flowers of Neptune 6
The Spark That Bled
Pompeii Am Gotterdammerung
Waitin’ for a Superman
The Golden Path
Riding to Work in the Year 2025
The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song (With All Your Power)

True Love Will Find You In The End
Race for the Prize

• The 2025 european campaign was the band’s official end of the of the Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots anniversary tour.

July: 2025

Well the band didn’t get stuck in a round-a-bout, or maybe they did, either way the European Vacation of 2025 is complete with a well deserved break before joining up with Modest Mouse to begin the 20-date “American Tour 2025, The Good Times are Killing Me.”

The June 21 show at the Azkena Rock Festival in Vitoria-Gasteiz Spain was the band’s final show of the Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots anniversary tour which began in 2023 in England.

In total, the band performed 81 shows throughout 16 countries traversing the globe to countless amounts of adoring fans while cementing loving, lifelong memories.

Now that its’ officially summertime, fans in America are making their plans to catch the upcoming tour with renewed anticipation.
What’s next in the ongoing The Flaming Lips evolution?

Time will tell…

August 2025:

First day of U.S. Tour!!!!

The band opens it’s summer tour tonight at the Coca-Cola Roxy theater in Atlanta Georgia with Modest Mouse and special guest Friko.

The band has been using time in July to rehearse for the upcoming tour, dropping hints on social media about songs they could be performing. Earlier this week Wayne and the band posted a video on instagram of Derek and Matt rehearsing the harmony to Five Stop Mother Superior Rain, a song first performed in the 1980s and then released on the 1990 album In a Priest Driven Ambulance.

The 25-date summer tour beings in the American South and then swings north to the northeast before moving through the mid-west to the west coast for a run of shows in California, before making special appearances at the Salamander Festival in Washington and then the Mempho Music Festival in Memphis Tennessee.
All humans have been urged to attend.

From August 1 through August 20: Modest Mouse and special guests Friko.
September 3 through 11: Modest Mouse and special guests Dehd.
September 13 through 14: Modest Mouse, Sleater-Kinney, Courtney Barnett, Build to Spill, Yo La Tengo and more.
September 16 through 17: with special guests to be determined.
October 4: with Widespread Panic, Mavis Staples, Lukas Nelson, The Pharcyde and more.

September 2025:

With one half of the summer tour now complete, the second half is about to begin on the West Coast with a string of shows running up the California coast.

Thus far this tour we have seen some incredibile performances of Five Stop Mother Superior Rain, a few somber and moving presentations of Feeling Yourself Disintegrate, and nightly tributes to Black Sabbath and their late singer Ozzy Osbourne with Issac Brock of Modest Mouse joining the band to perform War Pigs.

The band will conclude the 2025 tour with special appearances at the Salamander Festival in Washington and then the Mempho Music Festival in Memphis Tennessee with stops in Montana and Utah inbetween.

October 2025:

The band finished its 2025 tour in fine fashion at the Mempho Music Festival in Memphis, Tennessee on Oct. 4.

The festival itself is its own unique experience. An expansive playground of immersive art and music commingled together. Stepping onto the grounds is like taking a journey to another time and place.

Many first timers were in attendance in Memphis. Their reactions online were just as you would expect; rich with love, joy, bewilderment, and a promise to catch the next show down the road.

But the quote of the day came from the festival itself when it proclaimed: “The Flaming Lips are always full of surprises. We’re not exaggerating when we say that their show tonight was an audio-visual masterpiece.”

If there was ever a quote that could make one smile, that was a good one.

NOTE: Anyone with pictures from performances that would like to send one in to this newsletter, please send them to editorobserver1@gmail.com or tag The Observer on Instagram. We would love to include them in a future issue!