Gig played on 22/04/06

It starts, as all Flaming Lips concerts should, with a Town Crier. Standing amid enough brightly coloured balls to give even Jose Gonzales flushed cheeks, the charming old duffer addresses this dramatic, imperious venue, which tonight resembles a Roman Coliseum with all the glory but none of the death. He promises "a cosmic audio revolution", but such a phrase will, ultimately, seem like mere platitudes. While there's little doubt The Flaming Lips are one of the most dazzling pop experiences on the planet right now, it seems unreasonable that they should also be the globe's most remarkable live band.

In recent years, the theatre of Wayne Coyne, Steven Drozd and Michael Ivins has become increasingly profound and celebrated. Using the twin visual and sonic arts of the silly, political and challenging has lead the group to tonight, where, after a career stretching some 20 years, this party is clearly as much for them as us. As the group crash into "Race For The Prize"'s pursuit of the impossible dream - a cure for cancer - Technicolor ticker tape erupts before your eyes, balloons ricochet into each other and a group of aliens and Santas sandwich Wayne Coyne's fantastic charisma. Captain America is, naturally, the stage manager.

As a force of entertainment, rock'n'roll is a dead duck in the 21st century. Watch a rock group thrash at their drain grey catalogue wearing a mixture of desperate emotion and miraculous glee or experience a hip hop show delivered like a half-cocked gun - all threat and no bang. This is not a problem for The Flaming Lips. Coyne begins the evening inside a huge inflatable sphere, surfing the audience like a human hamster. Later, during the vicious political polemic of "The W.A.N.D.", he straps a flashing strobe onto his chest in a statement of blinding intent. And, as ever, we have the recurring good vs evil showdown via a Nun glove puppet, in a heart-tugging rendition of "Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots".

Politically, The Flaming Lips have grown ever more direct while also showing their fallible, naïve heart. Again, tonight's gig is about us and them: The Christian right-wing and The Scientologists vs Us. Bush and Blair vs Us. Britney and Gwen vs Us. "Free Radicals" defies fanatical religions commendably but is, inevitably, only able to offer us playful pop-funk and Prince as an alternative. Wayne, of course, takes off on a series of meandering speeches, which have no answer and leave some pining for a show in which they play straight for 90 minutes, hard and fast, without the extravaganza. Indeed, it's during a damning, outraged closing smash through Black Sabbath's "War Pigs" that we are truly empowered.

Crucially, the liberated, bold sonic power of The Flaming Lips is not lost amid all the theatrics and vague bluster here tonight. "The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song" is cosmic, propulsive pop the like that only they can conjure, while "The Spark That Bled" bounces in one symphonic dash and six glorious minutes from one end of Coyne's wounded soul to the invincibility of his "I stood up and I said yeah!" declaration. Perhaps best of all, however, is "Do You Realize??", which splits the atom at the point where their ambitions as musicians and humans collide in one beaming affirmation of the stick-man fragility of life. It is, probably, the greatest show on Earth.

The Flaming Lips have left the building.

by Ben Gilbert