Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah

Back from the OC...what a wealthy and depressing place. Santa Cruz is just the opposite.A few months ago, I wrote a couple short CD reviews as an audition for my school paper. Here's one of them, about an album I'm continuing to enjoy. Dig my laidback prose and alliteration!Who says you need to compromise your sound to find success? The Flaming Lips are one of the strangest acts to ever break out into the mainstream, building their songs not out of hooks and beats, but sculpted chunks of guitar, drums and buzzy keyboards, all subverted into head Lip Wayne Coyne's maniacally inspirational philosophy. At War With the Mystics leaves the dreamy concept pop of Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots far behind. This time around, Wayne decrees that they will rock, so they must rock!"The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song" sets up this new aesthetic perfectly; Coyne is preaching a parable of power, asking questions like, "If you could take all the love, without giving any back, would you do it?" and getting eerie, compressed chants of the titular word in response. The lyrics all fit nicely into the Cult of Wayne, but drummer/multi-instrumentalist Steven Drozd is the musical mastermind here, showing off his versatility with a wide grab bag of styles; "Pompeii Am Gotterdammerung" is Pink Floyd chord rock, "...The Wizard Turns On" ventures into Os Mutantes style psychedelic wankery, and "Haven't Got a Clue" is an astonishingly experimental funk track. "Goin On," however, is a disconcertingly pretty closer, eloquently summing up the courage it takes just to live to the next day. Mystics isn't as good as The Soft Bulletin, their 1999 classic; the songs aren't quite so personal, and often times the Flips seem more concerned with sound than songwriting. It all sounds incredible, there's no question, but the album is undoubtedly a studio creation, and longtime producer Dave Fridmann, who is decidedly not a songwriter, has a bigger presence than ever. But the vast majority of albums are not as good as The Soft Bulletin, and Mystics might be even more representative of what the Lips are all about. This is everything you could want out of a Flaming Lips album; it's strange, beautiful and awesome, perfect music to jump around to with giant pink bunnies and pyrotechnics. Preach to us from your Plastic Bubble, Wayne! The congregation is listening.