The Flaming Lips

Oczy Mlody

Bella Union

THE title of this 14th studio album from the epoch-spanning American psychedelic band is Polish and translates as “young eyes”, though that's of little relevance beyond the fact that Lips mainstay Wayne Coyne bought a second-hand novel in the language because he liked the cover and then found those words within it. Employing them in the new album's overall concept – something about gated futuristic communities – he has turned them into the name of a fictional party drug. How much any of this matters is moot: Oczy Mlody merely confirms that the Flaming Lips are to the Noughties and beyond what Gong were to the 1960s and 1970s, namely unashamed space rockers defiantly ploughing their own furrow. But with a better live show.

Nothing happens at any great speed. By the time we reach closing tracks Almost Home (Blisko Domu) and We A Family, the band have almost reached walking pace. But it's delicately-wrought pair How and There Should Be Unicorns, in which Coyne's rasping tenor floats above sonorous bass lines and spacey-sounding synth trills, and six-minute wig-out One Night While Hunting For Faeries And Witches And Wizards To Kill that typify Oczy Mlody. The Flaming Lips's outward bound journey takes no detours here.

Barry Didcock