'At War With The Mystics' by The Flaming Lips

This is an album I had as a Christmas present a couple of years back. It was given to me along with their previous album, both of which I'd asked for, but it was this one that stuck. The Flaming Lips are a somewhat experimental band, and this album shows them at their most conventional. That said, all things are relative.

It's album you can more or less pass judgement on immediately. The first track, 'The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song' is a catchy, slightly riotous and vaguely unhinged song. You can love it, or you can hate it, but I don't think there's a lot of space between those two positions. If you don't enjoy it, there's little point in continuing - all the adjectives I've just used pretty much apply to the album as a whole. Even when the tempo drops, as it frequently does, there's still a lot going on.

If I had to guess, I'd say big Flaming Lips fans would be a bit sniffy about this record - they'd probably judge it to be too commercial, and too far from the band's anarchic spirit. Well, it isn't - it's the sound of The Flaming Lips learning to produce something with some focus, and as a result, it's great.