The Flaming Lips live at The Marquee, Cork

Can I have Wayne Coyne as the master of ceremonies at my next birthday party please? The indefatigable Flaming Lips frontman is the Mad Hatter of rock ‘n’ roll, choreographing a live show that combines all the best elements of a fancy dress party, a New’s Years Eve bash, a trip into the cosmos, a lucid dream, a ticker-tape parade, a game of Quasar, and finally, buried in there somewhere, a rock concert.
As is typical of the ‘through the looking glass’ world of The Flaming Lips, the show begins with an ending. ‘Race For The Prize’ would provide a fitting climax to the most thrilling of spectacles, but it’s the Lips staple opening gambit. A sea of gigantic balloons bounce in the crowd, the assorted cast of santas, aliens, and superheros cavort around the stage, the mellifluous sonics soar into the stratosphere. We have lift off: within three short minutes you’re no longer on Planet Earth, you’re on Wayne’s World.
Blasted into this rarefied atmosphere and with the confines of the Cork Marquee sealing in the intoxicating fervour, the audience revels in the light-headed delirium. The sensory overload of the opening gives way to the space-funk of ‘Free Radicals’, while the epic psych-rock oldie ‘Mountainside’ reminds those in attendance that that there’s more to The Flaming Lips than their post-Soft Bulletin breakout.
It’s at this point Coyne’s monologues being to ramble, he appears emotional at returning to Ireland; a little momentum drains from the proceedings. It feels churlish to scold him though. There’s a childlike wonder to being part of a Flaming Lips audience, the show akin to being told a ripping bedtime yarn by a lunatic uncle. Naturally you want him to hurry on to the exciting bits, but you tolerate his well-intended digressions. “A lot of our songs are about death,” exclaims Coyne, “so our show has to be a celebration of life.”
Beams return to faces when ‘Yoshimi Pt. 1’ is morphed into a slow burning spiritual, and ‘Pompeii Am Gotterdammerung’ hits unrivalled ecstatic heights. Audience members armed with lasers ping the stage from myriad angles, a solitary surviving balloon lolls about, toying with flailing hands, ‘Do You Realize?’ pounds out of the speakers, taking the show into warp factor 10. A cover of The Rolling Stones’ ‘Moonlight Mile’ makes a plaintive but soothing encore. Then, as quickly as we’d blasted off, it’s lights up, party over and back on terra firma. Did all that just really happen?