Naked emperor

(Morning Star, Saturday 15 April 2006)

ALBUM: Flaming Lips - At War with the Mystics
(Warner)

LIKE Murdoch from the A-Team, Flaming Lips' Wayne Coyne is someone whose annoyance level cannot be overstated.

Both men are crazy, whacked-out kooks, determined that the world should function on their level and that, as such, they are called creative, strategic visionaries.

Well, Murdoch is a fictional construct, so the annoyance that he fosters is a limited problem. But Coyne, with his pseudo-intellectual, neurotic sex-and-death confrontational bull, seems to be entirely real and, as such, is 100 per cent irritant.

So, At War with the Mystics comes highly commended, with some no mark calling them the "greatest US band."

Blink hard, my friends - the emperor is entirely nude. Coyne's daft squeaking rasp, cheap Prince take-offs and Jeff Wayne-style balladeering has no home on my stereo, even if Coyne is one of a crack team of military... oh, wait, that's the other guy.