The Flaming Lips Go To War

03/31/06 7:30pm

by Noah Love (CHARTattack)

If you missed your chance to get tickets to The Flaming Lips' April 4 show at the Phoenix in Toronto, you're not alone. The show sold-out in a mere two minutes and, at this stage of the game, that's exactly how multi-instrumentalist Steve Drozd likes it.

"I'd rather have that phenomenon where we play a smaller place and it sells out like that and there's an excitement and energy about it, rather than overdoing it and failing," says Drozd over the phone from his home in Oklahoma.

"I would think that we'd come back again and play more shows. The weird thing is that we played Montreal a few years ago and that was the only time we played Montreal — besides Lollapalooza in '94 — and we didn't play Toronto, which was weird. I would imagine if things go the way we're hoping, we'll hit a few proper cities later in the year."

It's likely going to be a big year for the Lips when their new record, At War With The Mystics, is released on the same day as their only currently scheduled Canadian date next week.

The album follows roughly a year of delays, though none of the problems were actually internal. Right now, things are going better than ever for the three-piece group. The success of their 2002 record, Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots, kept them on the road a lot longer than they expected and consistently created scheduling conflicts of the best kind.

"When Yoshimi came out in 2002 and we thought, 'We'll tour for about a year, maybe two years at most,'" says Drozd. "'Then Wayne [Coyne] will finish up the Christmas On Mars movie and then we'll do the new record.'

"But everything got crazy. We ended up touring for Yoshimi a lot more than we thought we would and, by the time we actually hunkered down to start recording, it was January of last year. No blunders happened along the way, no crisis. We just ended up being busier than we thought we would be."

The new LP is guided, in principle, by the record's 10th track, "The W.A.N.D." After doing "Mr. Ambulance Driver" six months before the rest of the album, Drozd initially worried that he, Coyne and Michael Ivins would have problems moving their music in a new direction.

But "The W.A.N.D." — which has a space-rock approach consistent with the band's previous work, but is undeniably less murky than similar Lips tracks that predate it — gave the band their direction for the entire LP.

"Soft Bulletin has all these heavy themes, and Yoshimi has a heavier overview," says Drozd. "Not that At War With The Mystics is fluff, because there's plenty of those symphonic pop songs that we do, but it felt good to go back to those after we'd done some of the fun rock songs."

For the lucky 1,000 or so who will attend the Lips show at the Phoenix, you can look forward to a similar spectacle to the one the band have been producing over the last four years. Just don't expect Drozd to don his famous pink elephant suit.

"I'm looking for something new," he admits. "I don't want to wear my street clothes because that's no fun, but I don't want to wear the pink elephant suit anymore.

"I was wearing this oversize fat suit for a while that's insanely large and it looked funny, but it's too unwieldy and it's got a fan on the inside that keeps it blowing up and it was just too much. I should have something when we get to Toronto.

"We're going to keep the animal suit people dancing on stage. I think we're going to change the way the stage looks whenever we can and we're going to use the bubble when we can because that's just fun.

"We're going to try to make it an even bigger show — more KISS stuff. I was hoping for pyrotechnics, but I don't think Wayne wants to go there just yet. Hopefully by the time we get to Toronto we'll be able to test all our new stuff out and the people of your city will be the beneficiaries of our new energy and enthusiasm."