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NO FUCKS GIVEN, EVEN IF NO FUCKS WERE ALLOWED, AS 2026 WORLD TOUR BEGINS

words and photographs by The Observer

As people were lining up to turn in their skis or catch one last run on the little snow there was on the slopes, there was joyous anticipation building at the base of the mountains.

For music fans gathered at the gates early, just below the towering Teton peaks, wonderful warm optimism was flowing as freely as the smiles.

“I’ve never seen The Flaming Lips, but a friend who’s seen them told me I could not miss this” one woman told another.

“I saw some clips online, then someone said they (the Lips) are the best live performance they’d ever seen… so yeah, I’ve been waiting a long time to see them” one fan said.

“We ran into Wayne walking around and we asked ‘can we take a picture with you?’ He replied ‘actually, I want a picture with you freaks’” one man said, beaming with joy.

There was also relief that the bright sunshine and warm temperatures were a stark difference to the previous year’s weather, when fans braved the Rendezvous music festival in the frigid blowing snow.

The Flaming Lips opened their 2026 world journey from the small Wyoming hamlet of Jackson Hole Mountain Resort located a few miles northwest of Jackson, Wyoming on Saturday March 28, headlining the Rendezvous Music Festival.

Both confetti and profanity were banned per local restrictions. So this meant the band was sorta handicapped with their set list and stage performance. This definitely meant Five Stop Mother Superior Rain — a song added back into the performance rotation ahead of the band’s U.S. tour in 2025 — could not be included.

Ski resort audiences can be, well… different, a melting pot of various people from all walks of life gathered together in one small place. There is a saying in Jackson, Wyoming that you’ll never truly meet a local, as everyone here is from somewhere else. At this show, old worn-out tye-dye shirts and flip-flops were blending with Louis Vuitton jackets and Yves Saint Laurent leather shoes.

For people staying at the resort, the show just outside their rooms was enough to lure them outside. For others, the music festival is an annual tradition and the best party in town on a Saturday night. Whatever the reason was to attend, the vast majority of this audience were getting to see The Flaming Lips for the first time.

March 28: Rendezvous Music Festival – Jackson, Wyoming

Set list:

The Stars Are So Big
Yoshimi Pt 1 & 2
Turn It On
Pompeii am Götterdämmerung
A Spoonful Weighs a Ton
The Golden Path
True Love Will Find You
The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song
Vein of Stars
Fight Test
She Don’t Use Jelly
Do You Realize??

ENCORE:

War Pigs
Race For The Prize

The band and crew had just 30 minutes to turn the stage around, following a set from the jam band group Umphrey’s McGee. Then at approximately 8:30 pm, the Lips took the dimly lit stage to begin.

Rising above the sounds of people slugging White Claws, conversations seemed to fade and attention was drawn towards the stage, as the band began to harmonize words from It Overtakes Me (full title: “It Overtakes Me / The Stars Are So Big… I Am So Small… Do I Stand a Chance?“). Listed on the set list as The Stars Are So Big, this soft, profound and powerful moment was an incredible ease into the show. For a handful of regular fans in attendance, these words pulled from It Overtakes Me were extra special, offering a cosmic perspective into what the Lips do best – challenge the listener with both fear and wonder. This music, both powerful yet tender, swept through the senses of the audience.

The song was also poignant because this April marks the 20th anniversary of At War With The Mystics, the 2006 album on which that song was released.

There is a moment in The Golden Path when the song breaks free and the rhythm pulsates at nearly breakneck speed. This is usually when the aliens arrive on stage to dance along. Looking around the crowd at this moment, the faces are a mix of bafflement, confusion and awe; right as Wayne leads the band into the chorus.

“What is this?!” a nearby young exasperated person shouts, the reflection of the show playing in their sunglasses. It is clear that they have never seen anything like this before.

The performance of A Spoonful Weighs a Ton was wonderful, for it triggered the audience into harmonizing the word “love” with the band. Immediately afterwards, the opening tones of Fight Test filled the air. Above our heads, the high-altitude sky could be seen clearly, and as the question “where does the starlight begin” rang out, the twinkling lights of the universe were on display above us. During Jelly, balloons launched into the audience were blown away on the breeze. There is probably one balloon still out there bouncing over the landscape, maybe arriving in Pinedale, Wyoming by now.

The sporadic clouds finally broke completely to reveal a waxing gibbous moon during the band’s performance of Vein of Stars. (For this writer, hearing this song live is always special.) Towards the end of the set, right as the alcohol seemed to catch up with those partaking, crowd surfers in cowboy boots began floating above heads and drinks and beers began to fly. After all, we are in Wyoming, and there is no chicken wire to catch the flying libations.

By the end of the show, the sea of humanity that lay before the Lips is the same you’ll see after every show, with smiling fans screaming, and yearning for more. The band walked off right as the first of the planned fireworks were launched. Local skiing favorite, Breezy Johnson, was honored at the festival for winning the gold medal at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Cortina d’ Ampezzo, Italy just a month before.

What began in Wyoming this spring, will end in Kentucky this fall, following tens of thousands of miles of a joyful parade around the globe.

Editor’s Note: Any fans attending shows this year that would like to submit show notes, pictures or a narrative from any live performance, please feel welcome to send them to editorobserver1@gmail.com

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from the archives: April

April 1995

“Turn It On”

Single Transmissions from the Satellite Heart

•••

April 22 2003

“Fight Test”

Single Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots

•••

April 3 2006

At War With The Mystics

Studio Album

•••

April 17 2006

“The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song (With All Your Power)”

Single At War with the Mystics

•••

April 2011

Gummy Song Skull EP

•••

April 16 2011

Heady Nuggs: The First 5 Warner Bros Records 1992–2002

Compilation

•••

April 21 2012

The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends

Studio Album

•••

April 1 2013

The Terror

Studio Album

•••

April 22 2017

Onboard the International Space Station

Concert for Peace

•••

April 2018

Greatest Hits Vol. 1

•••

April 20 2018

Scratching the Door: The First Recordings of the Flaming Lips

Compilation

•••

April 13 2019

King’s Mouth

Studio Album

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Fifteen years of The Flaming Lips’ Gummy Song Skull: The strange, sweet artifact that captured a wild era

By The Observer

In the spring of 2011, The Flaming Lips once again proved that music releases did not have to follow conventional rules. That year, the band unveiled one of the strangest artifacts in modern music history – the EP Gummy Song Skull. A limited-edition recording literally sealed inside a life-sized gummy candy skull.

This month, this experimental release reaches its 15th anniversary, offering a chance to look back on one of the band’s most eccentric and creative periods, a moment when the band were pushing the boundaries of what a “record” could be.

A candy skull carrying new music

Released in April 2011, Gummy Song Skull was part of a larger series of unconventional monthly releases by The Flaming Lips throughout that year. The EP itself contained four new songs and was not issued on vinyl, CD, or digital platforms. Instead, the music was delivered on a USB flash drive hidden inside a gummy brain, encased inside a large edible gummy skull.

Fans who purchased the piece — priced around $150 — essentially bought both a collectible sculpture and a piece of music technology. The gummy skull could technically be eaten, and doing so was the only way to access the USB drive inside.

The release captured the Lips’ long-standing fascination with unusual formats. In the past, the band had experimented with multi-CD playback albums and elaborate physical packaging, but the gummy skull was perhaps the most playful and absurd example yet.

The music inside the skull

Behind the candy spectacle, Gummy Song Skull was still a legitimate Flaming Lips recording. The EP contained four songs:

“Drug Chart”

“Walk With Me”

“In Our Bodies, Out of Our Heads”

“Hillary’s Time Machine Machine!”

Musically, the tracks reflected the band’s evolving experimental direction during the early 2010s. The recordings combined distorted electronic textures, swirling psychedelia and fragmented structures that drifted between dreamy pop melodies and noise-driven atmospheres.

The EP was recorded with the core Flaming Lips line-up of Wayne Coyne, Steven Drozd, Michael Ivins, Kliph Scurlock and Derek Brown. Production duties were shared with the band and long-time studio partner Dave Fridmann.

The music hinted at the darker, more experimental sound the band would explore further on later releases.

The wild 2011 Flaming Lips experiment

The Gummy Song Skull EP did not exist in isolation. It was part of a particularly chaotic and prolific period for The Flaming Lips in 2011, when the group released new music almost monthly in different formats.

That year included collaborations with electronic artists like Neon Indian and Prefuse 73, as well as a companion EP called Gummy Song Fetus, which similarly hid a USB drive inside a gummy fetus.

Coyne often personally delivered these releases to independent record stores. He reportedly hand-dropped gummy skulls at an Oklahoma City shop on April 20 at 4:20 p.m., leaning fully into the band’s psychedelic mythology.

These strange distribution methods became almost as important as the music itself. For fans, the releases felt like performance art – a mixture of sculpture, collectible merchandise, and underground music distribution.

A physical artifact in the digital age

Looking back fifteen years later, the Gummy Song Skull stands as an artifact from a transitional moment in the music industry.

In 2011, streaming services were only beginning to dominate music consumption. Physical releases were becoming rarer, and artists were searching for ways to make tangible music products meaningful again.

The Flaming Lips responded by going to the extreme; creating releases that were intentionally bizarre, limited, and tactile. Rather than competing with the convenience of digital music, they turned the physical album into a conversation piece.

Collectors who managed to obtain one of the gummy skulls were left with a strange dilemma: preserve the sculpture or destroy it to retrieve the music hidden inside.

The Flaming Lips’ Wild 2011 Release Campaign:

A timeline of one of rock’s most experimental years

By 2011, the Lips had already built a reputation for turning the traditional album cycle upside down. But that year, the Oklahoma City group embarked on what would become one of the most unconventional release campaigns in modern music.

Rather than issuing a single album followed by a tour, the band launched an ongoing series of strange, limited-edition releases. Issued monthly, they were often packaged in these bizarre physical formats and featured an ever-changing cast of collaborators.

The result was a year-long explosion of creativity that blurred the line between music, performance art and collectible sculpture.

January 2011 — A New Concept for Releasing Music

The project began early in the year when The Flaming Lips announced they would release a steady stream of music throughout 2011, instead of waiting to bundle everything into a traditional album.

The band described the plan as an open-ended creative experiment – songs would arrive whenever they were finished, often in unusual formats and limited quantities. Fans were encouraged to treat each release as a collectible event rather than just another record.

February 2011 — Collaborations Begin

One of the first releases in the series was a collaborative EP with Neon Indian, the psychedelic electronic project led by Alan Palomo.

This record paired the dreamy synth textures of Neon Indian with The Flaming Lips’ surreal psychedelic pop. Soon after, additional collaborative releases followed with experimental producers including Prefuse 73.

These collaborations hinted that 2011 would not just be prolific, but wildly unpredictable.

Spring 2011 — The Gummy Skull Arrives

In April 2011, the band unveiled one of the strangest releases of their career – the EP Gummy Song Skull.

Instead of pressing the music onto a CD or vinyl record, the songs were stored on a USB drive hidden inside a gummy brain that was sealed inside a life-sized candy skull. Fans who bought the skull had to cut it open — or eat it — to retrieve the music.

The bizarre concept quickly became one of the most talked-about physical releases of the decade.

Shortly afterward, the band issued a companion piece, Gummy Song Fetus, which followed a similar concept using a gummy fetus sculpture containing a USB drive with music.

Summer into fall 2011 — Expanding the Experiment

As the year progressed, the Lips continued to release new material through an unpredictable mix of collaborations and limited-edition physical artifacts.

Some songs appeared on unusual formats like flash drives embedded in novelty objects, while others were tied to collaborative projects with artists across genres.

For fans, collecting the music became something of a scavenger hunt.

Recordings during 2011 would go onto culmintate into a Flaming Lips’ full-length studio album The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends.

Unlike the band’s earlier concept albums, this record leaned fully into the collaborative spirit of the 2011 project. It featured guest appearances from an eclectic list of artists including Bon Iver, Nick Cave, and Ke$ha.

The album was first released on vinyl on April 21 2012.

Why 2011 Still Matters

In retrospect, the 2011 experiment foreshadowed many of the creative strategies that artists would adopt later in the streaming era.

Rather than relying on a single album release, musicians increasingly began issuing singles, collaborations, and limited projects throughout the year to keep audiences engaged.

But few artists pushed the concept as far — or as playfully — as The Flaming Lips.

From candy skulls to USB drives hidden inside gummy sculptures, the band transformed the simple act of releasing music into a surreal art project.

Legacy of the Gummy Skull

Today, 15-years-later, Gummy Song Skull remains one of the most unusual releases in the Lips’ catalog. Unlike many EPs, it was never widely distributed in standard formats, making it something of a legend among collectors and dedicated fans.

From multi-disc experiments to stage shows filled with giant balloons and confetti, the band has consistently treated music as a multimedia experience, with fans involved in the process, rather than just a collection of songs.

The image of a neon gummy skull filled with psychedelic rock still perfectly captures the spirit of The Flaming Lips – a band forever willing to blur the line between art and spectacle.

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34 years ago

Live at The Palace in Hollywood, CA (April 12 1992)

pre-show footage
Talkin’ ‘Bout The Smiling Deathporn Immortality Blues
Hit Me Like You Did The First Time
Shine On Sweet Jesus
Unconsciously Screamin’
Rainin’ Babies
Take Meta Mars
Mountain Side
She Is Death
Under Pressure (Queen and David Bowie cover)

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16 years ago

 Live at the Charlottesville Pavilion in Charlottesville, VA (April 15 2010)

Video: thesatellitehead

In Excelsior Vaginalistic
The Fear / Space Bubble walk
Worm Mountain
Silver Trembling Hands
The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song
The Sparrow Looks Up At The Machine (live debut)
In The Morning Of The Magicians
I Can Be A Frog
Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots Pt. 1
See The Leaves
Laser Hands
Powerless (live debut)
Pompeii Am Götterdämmerung
She Don’t Use Jelly
Convinced Of The Hex
Brain Damage / Eclipse (Pink Floyd covers) (with Stardeath and White Dwarf)
Do You Realize??

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20 Years Later: At War With the Mystics and the sound of a band refusing to stand still

words and photographs by The Observer

On a clear Oklahoma night, Derek Brown can wander outside and gaze upon the heavens with the same questions humans have pondered for millennia.

“And I’m there, looking up at the sky
And I’m scared, thinkin’ ’bout the way that I
Don’t understand anything at all
And how it overtakes me, and I am just so small
Do I stand a chance?”

“I still feel this way when I look up at the stars in my backyard” said Brown – The Flaming Lips‘ full-time tour manager and veteran multi-instrumentalist – quoting the lyrics from It Overtakes Me.

When The Flaming Lips released At War With the Mystics on April 3 2006, they were coming off the kind of career peak that can either crystallize a band’s identity, or trap it in amber. Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots had transformed the Oklahoma City experimentalists into unlikely mainstream figures and festival headliners with a crossover hit and the glow of Grammy wins.

But instead of repeating that shimmering melancholy formula, Wayne Coyne, Steven Drozd, and Michael Ivins and company chose a different path altogether.

Or perhaps there was no choice at all, and the path they took with Mystics was a result of spontaneous organic creation, described by Coyne to The Observer as a group of musicians who at the time wanted to be “loud and freaky”.

Critics and listeners can trace the album’s influences back to the layered psychedelia of 1970s rock, from the sprawling, echo-laden expanses of Pink Floyd to the quirky pop harmonies that nod toward classic Beatles-era studio experimentation and even funk and disco roots in tracks like “Free Radicals”. The band’s ability to shift effortlessly between styles such as space rock, dream pop, krautrock, and chamber psychedelia, reflects both their wide musical appetite and The Flaming Lips’ lifelong fascination with sonic exploration.

Coyne’s writing on Mystics reinforced this blend of playfulness and protest, tackling issues like freedom, power, and moral responsibility with surreal imagery and an almost parable-like surrealism.

“I think we were kind looking for a direction… with The Soft Bulletin and then Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots we got very lucky that those were both like a radical new direction (or seemed like it to us) and that always feels good… but we didn’t really have a new direction… so I think we mostly decided we wanted to ROCK!!”

— Wayne Coyne

Twenty years later, At War With the Mystics stands as one of the most divisive and daring albums in the band’s catalog – louder, more politically pointed, and more sonically abrasive than its predecessors. It is an album that sounds, even now, like a band at war not only with “mystics”, but with expectation itself.

Editor’s Note: The Observer reached out to current and past members of the band — along with staff — to ask them about this period of time in the Lips’ history.

A Different Sound of Psychedelia

In 2006, the world felt unstable. Wars stretched across television screens, political tension seeped into everyday conversation, and the promise of the early 21st century had begun to fray at the edges. Into that strange atmosphere stepped The Flaming Lips, a band that had always seemed to exist slightly outside of time.

All of this turbulance and tension seemed to seep into the Mystics record’s DNA. Where Yoshimi was introspective and emotionally luminous, Mystics was outward-looking and restless. The opening track, “The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song (With All Your Power)” was a deceptively playful meditation on power and corruption. Over pounding drums and distorted guitars where Coyne asks a simple question:

If you could destroy the world… would you?

Coyne’s lyrics shifted from personal vulnerability to moral provocation. Where songs like “The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song” posed blunt ethical hypotheticals, “Free Radicals” skewered extremism and paranoia with biting satire delivered via a surreal rant about hate, prejudice, and irrational fear.

The Lips had always explored cosmic themes of death, consciousness and the fragility of existence, but Mystics pushed those questions into the realm of earthly power.

Other songs dug even deeper. “The W.A.N.D.” thundered with distorted bass and apocalyptic imagery, and “Mr. Ambulance Driver” mourned the human cost of violence and war.

Yet despite the darkness, the record still shimmered with the Lips’ trademark wonder.

In “Do You Realize??“, Coyne had once asked listeners to accept the inevitability of death. On Mystics, he seemed to ask something even harder:

What do we do with our power while we are alive?

Musically, the Lips pivoted as well. Psychedelia remained the foundation, but it was heavier, more guitar driven, and often deliberately chaotic. The lush orchestration of The Soft Bulletin gave way to thick riffs and distorted textures. The Mystics album nodded to classic-rock maximalism with flashes of glam stomp, funk undercurrents and arena-sized hooks, all filtered through the band’s trademark surrealism.

It was not nostalgia. It was mutation.

Beautiful mutation.

“We had been playing a lot a lot a lot of shows and when dudes play together for toooo long they usually end up doing more rock type things… I guess mostly cause it feels good to be loud and freaky”, Coyne said.

Though the band had rarely been overtly political before, 2006 brought out a sharper voice. The Iraq War loomed large over American culture, and Coyne began speaking more openly about the anxieties of the time. Yet instead of delivering straightforward protest songs, the Lips filtered those anxieties through surreal imagery and cosmic philosophy.

Even in their angriest moments, the band refused to abandon wonder.

To Coyne, politics was just another layer of the human condition, another strange chapter in the larger mystery of human behavior, exploring why people seek power and fear difference, within a species struggling to understand itself.

The cover of At War with the Mystics was painted by Coyne, and shows a lone silhouetted figure standing before a massive, radiant burst of light. The image captures a sense of awe and confrontation, symbolizing an individual facing overwhelming forces, be they political, cosmic, or spiritual.

“The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song (With All Your Power)”

“Free Radicals (A Hallucination of the Christmas Skeleton Pleading with a Suicide Bomber)”

“The Sound of Failure / It’s Dark… Is It Always This Dark??”

“My Cosmic Autumn Rebellion (The Inner Life as Blazing Shield of Defiance and Optimism as Celestial Spear of Action)”

“Vein of Stars”

“The Wizard Turns On… The Giant Silver Flashlight and Puts on His Werewolf Moccasins”

“It Overtakes Me / The Stars Are So Big… I Am So Small… Do I Stand a Chance?”

“Mr. Ambulance Driver”

“Haven’t Got a Clue”

“The W.A.N.D. (The Will Always Negates Defeat)”

“Pompeii Am Götterdämmerung”

“Goin’ On”

Inside Tarbox Road

Much of this beautiful mutation happened at Tarbox Road Studios, the secluded upstate New York studio run by longtime collaborator Dave Fridmann, who had worked with the band since the 1990s. Mystics recording stretched from mid-2004 into early 2006, and the sessions were both meticulous and unruly.

Fridmann, known for pushing sonic boundaries, encouraged extremes. Compression was cranked. Distortion was embraced. Tracks were layered until they felt physically dense. Guitars were allowed to snarl. Drums were mixed to punch rather than float. Vocals were stacked and saturated, at times teetering on overload.

Rather than gold-plated pop psychedelia, the band leaned into what some observers of that era described as “garage rock with computers”, layering analogue guitar textures with digital rhythms, glitch effects and manipulated vocals. This hybrid approach, chaotic yet meticulously arranged, featuring Kliph Scurlock on drums, gave the album an idiosyncratic feel that felt both immediate and otherworldly. 

Steven Drozd was responsible for an astonishing range of instrumental exploration during the sessions, including drums, guitars, bass, piano, synthesizers and orchestral arrangements. His ability to shift between instruments allowed the band to build songs in layers. A track might begin with a simple piano progression recorded late at night, then slowly accumulate guitars, horns, percussion and electronic textures over the course of weeks. Drozd has often described the process as “painting with sound”.

For example, many of the choir sounds on the record were not choirs at all. Coyne, Drozd, and Ivins would record dozens of vocal takes and stack them into enormous harmonies. The result created the cathedral-like sound heard in Vein of Stars.

Derek Brown, who first started working with the band in 2001 and witnessed the post-Yoshimi climb through the Lips‘ performance at Coachella in 2004, offered insight into this process, stating Drozd often used the digital audio workstation, Reason, to compose music.

“For example, I think everything you hear at the beginning of “Vein of Stars” was created by him in Reason“, Brown said.

“For me personally, “Vein of Stars” was a favorite that I felt was emotionally adjacent to “(Do You) Realize??”.

Mystics felt intentionally imperfect, a sharp contrast to the glistening cohesion of their earlier 2000s work. The band seemed less interested in smoothing edges than in amplifying friction, in a willingness to distort traditional songcraft in service of richer, more unpredictable sonic landscapes.

“At that time we were not that comfortable playing the sweeter mid-tempo kind of songs (which is what The Soft Bulletin and Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots mostly are) we would be onstage and feel like if we weren’t playing loud and freaky music it was kind of not connecting (we were wrong… ha… but that was what we collectively felt). So we went into At War With The Mystics with a little bit of an idea of being a freak-rock type group… but we didn’t really have very many freak-rock songs. We had The W.A.N.D. and Pompeii at Götterdämmerung, but we kind of quickly got bored of just rock”, Coyne said. “The cut-up drums and voice stuff on The W.A.N.D. is really cool and I felt like it was a good way to make a kind of new version of our freak-rock, but it took quite a while to put it (all the cut up stuff on The W.A.N.D.) all together, and maybe it bogged us down for too long… ha… so after that there isn’t very much cut-up drum stuff”.

— Wayne Coyne

Release and reaction

At War With the Mystics arrived in April 2006, debuting at No. 11 on the Billboard 200, the highest chart position of the band’s career. Lead single “The W.A.N.D.” had already hinted at the album’s sharper tone, pairing a muscular riff with pointed messaging. Meanwhile, “The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song” managed to couch moral inquiry in a sing-along chorus.

“Going into Mystics, I’m imagining they felt very validated by the success, but I can’t speculate on the mentality on making another record. Did they feel like it had to be as successful as Yoshimi?

Did they care?”

— Derek Brown

Critical reception was strong but complex. Reviewers praised its ambition and adventurous production while noting its stylistic sprawl. If Yoshimi felt like a seamless dream, Mystics felt like a collage – loud, unruly, occasionally disorienting. Mainstream critics praised its adventurous production and ambitious creativity.

Yet that unruliness became part of its identity. The album would go on to win two honors at the Grammy Awards, including Best Rock Instrumental Performance and Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical,
and solidified the band’s reputation as true music innovators.

A fitting tribute to the album’s layered, high-wire production.

The Observer asked Coyne if he ever felt pressure in making the follow-up album to Yoshimi.

“Not really … making up songs and creating music is (to me) fun … I get obsessed with it … ha … and so I want to do it … and sometimes it goes great and other times it’s frustrating but really it’s ALL an amazing way to spend yer energy … and follow your imagination … and really, ya know, no one has it figured out … it’s all new every time you try something.”

– Wayne Coyne

Taking the war on the road

If the album sounded maximalist, the tour was something else entirely.

Immediately after the release, The Flaming Lips embarked on an extensive international tour that would define their 2006 live year. Beginning with U.S. appearances and small promotional shows, the band quickly expanded into a full-blown global campaign.

The 2006–2007 run transformed theaters and festivals into psychedelic carnivals. Confetti cannons exploded nightly. Giant balloons bounced across crowds. Dancers in surreal costumes swirled under laser lights. And Coyne’s now-iconic space bubble rides, rolling atop the audience in a transparent sphere, became emblematic of the Lips’ refusal to separate spectacle from song.

International dates included a triumphant headlining show at London’s Royal Albert Hall, where the grandeur of the venue met the band’s kaleidoscopic stagecraft. In a symbolic nod to rock lineage, the Lips also shared festival bills with The Who, bridging generations of bombast and experimentation.

Back home, memorable performances included a homecoming at the Zoo Amphitheater in Oklahoma City, which showcased a giant UFO stage prop and was documented in the band’s “U.F.O.s at the Zoo” live DVD.  It was a hometown affirmation of how far the band had traveled from their noise-rock origins.

The tour did more than promote a record. It solidified The Flaming Lips as one of the great live acts of their era, capable of turning existential dread into communal euphoria.

“Pompeii” has become one of the most powerful live songs we ever play. I’ve only ever performed 5 songs from the LP with the band, but I’ve played 2 songs that were B-sides which includes “Why Does It End?”, which I love so much and would have no problem having back in the set list.”

— Derek Brown

WATCH: Videos from the the Mystics Era from thesatellitehead

A three-year mystic journey

June 2004 – Early Writing AND Direction Shift

The band signals a desire to return to a more guitar-driven, rhythm-heavy sound while maintaining their psychedelic layering. Coyne later describes wanting something more direct with songs that could “punch you in the face”, but still feel cosmic.

Mid–2004 to 2005 – Recording at Tarbox Road Studios

Once the recordings were complete, Fridmann assembled the massive arrangements into a final mix that felt enormous.

January 2026 – First Single Emerges

“The W.A.N.D.” is released ahead of the album and immediately stands out with its muscular riff and politically charged tone. The song signals the album’s more confrontational mood.

April 3 2006 – Album Release

At War With the Mystics is officially released.
The album debuts at No. 11 on the Billboard 200, at the time this is the band’s highest chart position.

Notable tracks include:

“The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song (With All Your Power)”

“The W.A.N.D.”

“Free Radicals”

“Mr. Ambulance Driver”

Spring 2006 – U.S. Launch Shows

The Flaming Lips begin an extensive North American tour. Their live production grows even more elaborate with confetti cannons, giant balloons, and Santa Claus dancers.

Coyne’s space bubble walks over the audience.

The theatrical presentation cements them as one of the era’s most visually inventive live bands.

Summer 2006 – UK AND European Dates

The band headlines major UK shows, including a landmark performance at Royal Albert Hall. They also perform at the o2 Wireless Festival, bringing their maximalist American psychedelic spectacle to European audiences.

June 2006 – Leeds Stadium Moment

In a symbolic passing-of-the-torch moment, the Lips open for The Who in Leeds – a nod to classic rock lineage and the album’s heavier sonic direction.

Fall 2006 – Festival Circuit AND Continued Touring

The Mystics tour continues across North America with major festival appearances and large amphitheater shows. The Lips appear at the Austin City Limits Music Festival, and Voodoo Music + Arts Experience. A standout hometown performance at Oklahoma City Zoo Amphitheatre is filmed and later released as “U.F.O.s at the Zoo“, capturing the full spectacle of the band’.’s performance.

February 2007 – Grammy Recognition

• Best Rock Instrumental Performance
• Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical

2007 – Tour Winds Down

After nearly a year of touring, the Mystics era closes. The band begins pivoting toward the more experimental, psychedelic extremes that would define their late-2000s output.

At war with the mystics is downright my favorite Flaming Lips album. Nearly every song on the album I have found myself going back to because they all are really just so good. Songs like It Overtakes Me and Mr. Ambulance Driver have a deep-rooted personal connection for me that I feel every time I listen back to those songs, while ethereal epic songs like Pompeii Am Götterdämmerung is one of my favorite songs that I listen to nearly every day. I love this song so much that even in some of the roblox games, I have made I have named parts after this song, as well as adding that and many more Flaming Lips songs to the game.

This album has a special place in my heart, and to Wayne, Steven and Michael… thank you for making this album and fuck yeah Flaming Lips!

-Finn H.

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I’m a rather new flaming lips fan, 17 years old, and I first heard about them when the Weezer 2024 tour was announced and they were one of the openers. I hit play on Yoshimi one day  in April that year and I was instantly hooked. 

Then one day, about June, I put on At War With The Mystics. I didn’t really like it at first and turned it off either at “Free Radicals” or the beginning of “Sound of Failure“. Looking back, I can’t remember why I didn’t like those tracks. Maybe the former was a little “weird” for my taste back then, I don’t know.

Then I gave it another chance around August 2024 and… holy shit! It was fucking great! Tracks like “My Cosmic Autumn Rebellion“, “The W.A.N.D.“, and “Pompeii am Götterdämmerung”, holy fucking wow! It kinda changed how I listen to and think of music and inspired me to check out some more cool shit.

Seeing some of the songs live in Columbus that year in September was lifechanging. All 3 bands (Dinosaur Jr, The FLips, Weezer) were great. Then seeing The FLips perform some of those again in August last year was also fucking fantastic.

— Zachary

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I loved the album and it was my first new Flaming Lips album – as a fan who rolled in after Yoshimi – that I actively experienced being released.

However, the ending song Goin’ On‘ truly made me believe they were saying goodbye and for quite some time, l had convinced myself that this was the band’s swan song. I saw them twice that tour in 2006 – my very first Lips concert being at the Paradiso in Amsterdam, where I got all their autographs – and then again two months later at the Dutch Pinkpop festival.

Also, my first LSD trip ever kicked in during a loud play-through of the album, specifically during the song The Wizard Turns On…

— Fluxx Wildly

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Many great days were spent playing this album while driving all over creation, going on walks and hikes, falling in (and out of) love… I look forward to more great days spent playing this album

— Lauren

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Being a newer fan, my connection to the album is probably quite different. On the physical side of things, as I’m a record collector who is working hard to collect all of the Flaming Lips vinyl albums, Mystic’s was the first album I really wanted but it was hard to get, because it didn’t have a re-press. But someone gave me their copy for my birthday, so I have a connection to the record like that. But musically, the album is brilliant. My personal highlights are Free Radicals, The Sound of Failure, Vein of Stars, The W.A.N.D. and Pompeii, but overall I love all the tracks.

— Sir Who

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I listen to Mystics all the time when driving home with my daughters. We all love the variety of trippy, beautiful songs. We mess with the order of the album and for the first track, I recommend The W.A.N.D. for that subtle record spinning/ringing sitar sound, and for the last track, the Yeah Yeah Yeah song, because it ends with Steven saying “I quit, I couldn’t make it all the way through that”, which is playful irony since it’s our choice as the last track. Vein of Stars is amazing to slow dance to, and It Overtakes Me” is one of the most underrated songs, with a beautiful transformation into an entirely different song and vibe half-way through it; masterpiece.

— Michael

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Mystics consolidated the success of that phase of their career, when they finally began getting more renown for their work in the studio and on the stage

— Gabriel

Two decades of Mystic reverberations & why it still matters

Will the influence of the Mystics recordings ever subside? The answer is no, it will never end.

Twenty years on, At War With the Mystics remains a touchstone for fans who value The Flaming Lips’ fearless approach to music. While not always the most cohesive or conventionally melodic album in their catalog, its influence lies in its daring – a testament to a band willing to explore in the pursuit of wonder. Its experimental heart, political threads, and imaginative production continue to inspire both musicians and listeners, who see it as a milestone of early-21st-century psychedelic rock. 

In hindsight, At War With the Mystics occupies a fascinating space in The Flaming Lips’ evolution. It is less cohesive than The Soft Bulletin and less emotionally immediate than Yoshimi, but it may be braver than either. It represents a band unwilling to calcify at the moment of peak popularity.

It also foreshadowed what would come next: even more experimental releases, increasingly immersive live concepts, and a continued blurring of art-rock ambition with child-like spectacle.

In the long arc of Lips’ evolution, from boom-box experiments and the multi-CD Zaireeka to multimedia performance spectacles, Mystics stands as a vivid declaration of artistic independence and a reminder that art, and war, with the mystics is never straightforward.

And perhaps that is the point.

The Flaming Lips have always chased wonder through noise, chased humor through distortion, and chased transcendence through excess. On At War With the Mystics, they turned the volume up on all of it, and in doing so, created a record that still vibrates with urgency two decades on.

And through it all, Coyne’s central message remained simple:

Life is fragile.

The universe is mysterious.

But the strange miracle of being alive is worth celebrating.

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Lifelong fan scores first show

Guitarist Will Nutt, who has been a self-described hardcore Lips fan since he was six years old, loves to sprinkle Lips songs throughout his sets as he tours around the remote Wyoming countryside in search of a live audience and a pay-check.

Wyoming is a rural state, where venues can be smaller, more intimate and spread out across vast distances. The state is also known for its country and western music roots where Friday nights are for bull riding paired with cold beer and line dancing. For Nutt, whose musical roots began with punk, these places are golden opportunities to give these audiences a taste of a different kind of music.

“People sing along to Yoshimi, and I usually get applause from playing Lips songs”, Nutt said. “The most common thing I hear is “you’re the only original person I’ve ever heard cover the Lips“”.

Nutt has been playing music since he was kid, and has been performing professionally since he was 21. Now at 41, the Cody, Wyoming native works full-time and plays about 3-4 shows per month depending on availability with his band Ruggy Bear.

“Even though I’ve been a Flaming Lips fan as long as I have memory, I have only been playing Lips in my setlist for a couple of years now”, Nutt said. “My main jam is “Yoshimi“, but I have been known to play “Waiting for Superman”, “She Don’t Use Jelly” and my all time favorite Lips song, “Bad Days“.

In Jackson Hole, Nutt came face to face with the band for the first time on March 28. A life-long dream to see musicians, who like Nutt, perform their music their own way.

“The Flaming Lips live is a rocket ship of positive energy. They have an amazing stage presence, killer visual background. The blow-up puppets really add to the theater of the performance, which is truly bad ass. I like hearing the different members of the band weave all their parts together and share the art. The Flaming Lips have always been part of my chosen music family. So to see them live and meet the band afterwards and to be able to fanboy all over the place was an incredible experience. I can’t wait to see them again!”, Nutt said. “I was a believer of the Lips from the Batman soundtrack. I remember when She Don’t Use Jelly came out – I wanted the “tangerine” song on repeat. But The Riddler being my favorite Batman villain, as an 11-year-old kid hearing Bad Days as his introduction soundtrack on Batman Forever, I became a mega-fan of Clouds Taste Metallic. This Here Giraffe is my other favorite song off that record.”

Find out more: @willnuttrocks and @ruggybearmusic

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Confirmed dates for 2026 so far…

March 28 – Teton Village, Wyoming: Rendezvous Music Festival

April 18 – Mexico City, Mexico: Velódromo Olímpico

May 3 – El Paso, Texas: Sol Summit

May 7 – Houston, Texas: White Oak Music Hall

May 8 – Austin, Texas: Austin Psych Fest

May 30 – Denver, Colorado: Outside Days festival

June 15 – Vienna, Austria: Gasometer

June 17 – Milan, Italy: Parco Della Musica

June 18 – Bologna, Italy: Bonsai Gardens

June 20 – Prague, Czechia: At the Letňany Airport (other notables include Nick Cave, Sting, Slowdive)

June 22 – Belgrade, Serbia: Luka Beograd

June 23 – Zagreb, Croatia: Inmuic Festival (other notables include Gorillaz, Idles, Jack White)

June 25 – Athens, Greece: Release Athens Festival – SOLD OUT

July 16 – Galway, Ireland: Galway International Arts Festival (with Mercury Rev) – SOLD OUT

July 18 – Margate, England: Dreamland (co-headline with The Beta Band)

July 19 – Nottingham, England: The Nottingham Splendour Festival

July 21 – Wolverhampton, England: Civic Hall

July 23 – Halifax, England: The Piece Hall (co-headline with The Beta Band)

July 25 – London, England: Somerset House Summer Series

July 26 – Suffolk, England: Latitude Festival (other notables include David Byrne, Lewis Capaldi)

July 27 – Glasgow, Scotland: Summer Nights at The Bandstand

July 29 – Cardiff, Wales: Depot

August 22-23 – Jakarta, Indonesia: LALALA Fest

September 25 – Louisville, Kentucky: Bourbon & Beyond Festival

Lips Launch New Website

Perhaps in preparation of a new album currently in development, the Lips quietly launched a new version of their website in recent weeks, updating information and making it easier for fans to connect with tour dates. More at www.flaminglips.com.

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2026 World Fan Project

What would the world be like without The Flaming Lips?

Have you ever thought “what would this world be like, how would the universe sound, or how would we connect with each other without The Flaming Lips?“

Although hard to ponder, we thought what if we posed this question to fans all over the world and documented their responses for The Observer’s first large world-wide fan project.

Whether you have written in before or not, participated in our fan interviews or not, everyone is welcome to offer their insight through words, art, essay, pictures or anything creative to fulfil a community perspective with this question:

What would the world be like without The Flaming Lips?

So there is no hard deadline with this project, with an estimated publish date say… later this year late summer or fall. We’ll put out a last call sometime around then, and then work to catalog and design the responses into one massive Observer publication.

The goal is to get fans thinking, to search themselves and express their thoughts and or gratitude into one large collection.

To submit, simply contact us at editorobserver1@gmail.com.

Please attach the name you would like to use, along with your submission and any special instructions you have for your content. Please only submit content that you own and is yours to publish.

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Coyne announces first children’s book, “I Am an Eye I Don’t Know Why”

Fans of Wayne Coyne and the psychedelic world of The Flaming Lips will soon have a new way to experience his creativity — through the pages of a children’s book.

Third Man Books has announced the upcoming release of I Am an Eye I Don’t Know Why, Coyne’s first children’s book, which he both wrote and illustrated. The 64-page book features entirely original artwork and storytelling from Coyne, marking a new chapter in the longtime musician’s artistic career.

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WATCH:

Kliph Scurlock on The Flaming Lips debuting ‘The Terror’ live at SXSW 2013 at Auditorium Shores

Wilco’s Mikael Jorgensen talks playing Madison Square Garden on NYE 2004 with The Flaming Lips

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Editor’s Message

Welcome to Issue 16

Is the strange miracle of being alive worth celebrating?

Fuck yeah it is!

Hey, we all face unpredictable, life-altering challenges that can test our very survival. Sometimes it the loss of a love, the loss of a friendship, or the grief from death.

Life and love can be hard, but just remember, the world is better with you in it.

***

Thank you to everyone who responded to our questions regarding the 20th anniversary of At War with The Mystics. I have not been writing about music for very long, so there has been a bit of a learning curve to all of this, but to have the help of Derek Brown, Scott Booker, and Wayne Coyne for this and seeing messages from them really was incredible.

Thank you for all your time!

For well over a year we have been writing about this album and the milestone. For this package we were able to cut massive amounts of general research in favor of direct insight from the members of the group.

We reached out to many people and some responded, others did not, and that’s totally OK. The goal was to simply give everyone the opportunity to participate.

When talking with Derek, I was intrigued to learn that The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song was not originally the first track on the Mystics album. I was hoping to dive deeper into the final sequencing of the album, but time ran out for this issue. Which is totally fine. The cool thing is, all of my notes are part of a larger file that will no doubt be used in the future. So I will continue to gather what we can when we can.

April is a huge month for music release history. And we have tried to touch each album in the month it was released, but with April, well, we gotta punt some of this history to next April. At least the plan is to keep The Observer alive that long.

But for now, we’ll just take it one issue at a time… 😉

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Just a general FYI, when crowd surfing, please take your cowboy boots off, this makes getting kicked in the head less painful.

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We are pleased to announce that our “What would the world be like without The Flaming Lips?” fan project is off to a great start with readers already sending in their submissions. Keep them coming! It’s going to be cool once it’s complete!

I’ve been kicking around the idea of a printed edition of this project. This old newspaper kid still retains a lifetime of now useless newspaper knowledge, so, perhaps a printed ‘zine that can be mailed easily?!

We’ll see.

***

As the band heads south to Mexico, friends of this newsletter will be heading there as well. So we can expect some pictures and perspective from the Mexico City show in the May edition. And if anyone wants to contribute words, pictures, art and essays, please feel welcome to reach out! We love to include everyone!

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I really like that the The Flaming Lips make music on their terms. And if you are open, willing and capable of getting on their creative plane, you can start to understand their journey. The Lips’ musical path is nothing like that of most artists. Their songwriting, engineering and recording have given us a lifetime of artistic growth.

U.S. figure skater Alysa Liu captured my attention at the Winter Olympics this year. So like most anything I find interesting, I went and read as much as I could about her, and it’s a remarkable story. She is the daughter of Chinese-American immigrants who quit figure skating altogether due to the intense pressure being in the spotlight can bring.

In short, she was skating — something she found love with at a young age — without any joy.

Then she returned to compete in these games, and not only did she dominate the world’s best competition to win gold, from what I have read, the judging wasn’t even close.

And what was her secret? She simply performed on her terms, Liu found a way to compete without carrying the weight of the moment. She took to the ice with her facial piercings and dyed hair and skated with a nonchalance paired with a bright smile. And watching her on the ice she looked, well, free…

I consider figure skating an art. And like most art, the artists themselves can live under the intense pressure of public scrutiny. There is all this pressure from “fans” that artists must always maintain this mystical, high-level of artistry at all times.

I guess this is a long way of saying, make and perform your art the way Alysa Liu skates. With a nonchalance and a heart full of joy and make music, or art, for yourselves.

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Please think about referring this newsletter to your friends, or drop the link into your groups or whatever. We all need breaks from social media, and this newsletter was designed for fans who maybe are not on social media. The mission of this newsletter is to celebrate the fans and the music of The Flaming Lips. This is a safe space for those wanting to share stories of their connections to the music and the band.

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Parting shot:

Founded January 1 2025 

All are welcome here.

This newsletter was created by fans, for fans, and is in no way affiliated with The Flaming Lips or their management.

By signing up you will only receive this monthly newsletter and no other promotions or solicitations.

The Observer operates under the same ethics and principles of traditional journalism. All information, including quotes, facts and attributions are verified before publication. All visual components are independently sourced by the contributing artist(s) and The Observer adheres to all copyright instructions and labels.

The Observer may not consider any form of advertising or sponsorship. The mission is to celebrate the music, and the lives of those who cherish it. For anyone wanting to contribute words, pictures, art and essays, please feel free to reach out.

Questions?
editorobserver1@gmail.com

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Send submissions to: editorobserver1@gmail.com

Thank you for being you,
– Woody