The Flaming Lips: At War with the Mystics

Raise your hands to those who saw Brad Beasley's doc The Fearless Freaks and actually gave a shat about their music before the Soft Bulletin.

See, that cricket and dust-bunny across a lonely highway sound is just a further testament to the late-breaking genius of Wayne Coyne, Drozd and Co.

There aren't a whole lot of 40+ year old musicians who can write a Sesame Street ditty gone wrong like The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song, while still offering a backhanded glove slap to Britney and Gwen Stefani in The Sound of Failure.

Although the album will probably get crushed under the giant balls of high expectations in the bearded hipster arena, it sits as a step sideways to Yoshimi. There's a lot of the whimisical noise-making from the sucky-era of the Lips, but unfortunately, a lot of the melody and embracing of pop that defined the Lips in the post-sucky era is lost.