It has been said that City Slang founder Cristof Ellinghaus began the label so he could release Flaming Lips records - the first release was actually The Lemonheads' 'Famous Spanish Dishes', but Flaming Lips fine 'In A Priest Driven Ambulance' soon followed. Since then the Lips have gone on to the major label world of Warner Brothers, so it's cool that they've returned to City Slang for one night only to headline the label's tenth birthday celebrations.
Tonight they are preceded by current City Slang acts Wheat and Built To Spill, the former currently enjoying major UK critical acclaim due to 1999's 'Hope and Adams' album, and the latter ploughing their own path between the twin influences of Neil Young and Beat Happening.
We arrive a bit late to really appreciate Wheat- which basically means I didn't hear them play my fave tune 'Don't I Hold You' - although their accessible slices of American indie are well received. Built to Spill are more of a puzzle, mainly because I've got 90% of their recorded output and I have a bit of trouble recognising a lot of the set. Mainman Doug Martsch touches on his work with the Halo Benders with a fine version of 'Virginia Reel Around the Fountain', and blends pop sensibilities with cool guitars on 'Centre of the Universe' and the crowd pleaser 'Car'. Crazy Horse style guitars dominate the set though, perhaps most bizarrely on the Ozzy Osbourne cover (!) 'Mr Crowley'. Oh yes, you don't get past an old metaller like me that quickly!
All of this is a distant memory by the time Flaming Lips have ambled on stage to the unironic backing tape of Louis Armstrong's 'Wonderful World', and launched into the miraclous burst of sound and vision that is 'Race For the Prize'. You can almost sense the audience's jaws drop as the sweeping orchestrations and gong smashing sync in with the nuclear explosions and passionate conductors projected on to the big screen. This is truly one of the most powerful pieces of music that has been created in recent years, it's nothing less than our generation's equivalent of David Bowie's 'Heroes'.
The rest of the set carries on from this inspired opening. Glove puppets, theremins, glitter and the occasional gong conspire to make this into nothing less than a magic show. There's none of your dull navel-gazing post-rock shenanagins here.
They concentrate mostly on the material from 'The Soft Bulletin', with a few oldies like the bombastic 'Lightning Strikes the Postman' and the finale of 'When You Smile' when the silences inbetween Coyne's stretched vocal chords just tell how much in awe the audience are. They also make a big deal of playing 'She Don't Use Jelly', purely because most of their contemporaries wouldn't bother releasing a load of balloons and glitter to celebrate "their hit", unless of course they were being ironic. And Flaming Lips aren't.
Each song is accompanied by stunningly well thought out visual projections - in particular a short film about the healing power of children for 'Waitin For Superman', giant plastic teeth for 'When You Smile' and swimming sperm for 'Feeling Yourself Disintegrate'. The latter also accompanied to a less serious extent by Wayne Coyne's glove puppetry. However, if you were thinking that the Lips were merely having a laugh you would be well off the mark. The whole show is immersed in a magic and almost innocent lack of irony, and when Wayne announces their version of 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow' (complete with audio-visual loop of Judy Garland in the Wizard of Oz) as "the most beautiful song a human being can sing" you know he means it.
If only more bands could wear their heart on their sleeve this way. The Flaming Lips' view of human kind- scuttling over a ridiculous planet yet capable of creating magic - is one that allows for no irony and no cynicism. So when Coyne sings of the land that he dreams of once in a lullaby, nobody smirks; they just dream along too. One to tell your grandchildren about.