Flaming Lips review – stops and starts make this too much of a good thing

O2 Academy Brixton, LondonWith lengthy Wayne Coyne anecdotes and frequent interruptions for stage effects to be brought on and off, there was an awful lot of time during the Lips’s two-and-three-quarter hours show when nothing was happening‘You could have had a wee and got back,” the chap behind me says to his partner as Wayne Coyne comes to the close of another rambling between-song anecdote in an oddly frustrating, stop-start evening: over the course of two-and-three-quarter hours, there’s an awful lot of time when nothing is happening – the gap between She Don’t Use Jelly and Flowers of Neptune 6 stretches to seven minutes, what with watching balloons, and Coyne’s anecdote about Kacey Musgraves dropping acid.The frustrations start before the band take to the stage. Plainly it is better that Brixton Academy is safe for visitors now, but there must surely be a middle ground where those arriving half an hour before show time don’t have to queue for 50 minutes to enter. When the Flaming Lips take to the stage, 15 minutes late, there are still many hundreds outside, and big gaps in the crowd. Continue reading...

Apr 27, 2025 - 13:45
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Flaming Lips review – stops and starts make this too much of a good thing

O2 Academy Brixton, London
With lengthy Wayne Coyne anecdotes and frequent interruptions for stage effects to be brought on and off, there was an awful lot of time during the Lips’s two-and-three-quarter hours show when nothing was happening

‘You could have had a wee and got back,” the chap behind me says to his partner as Wayne Coyne comes to the close of another rambling between-song anecdote in an oddly frustrating, stop-start evening: over the course of two-and-three-quarter hours, there’s an awful lot of time when nothing is happening – the gap between She Don’t Use Jelly and Flowers of Neptune 6 stretches to seven minutes, what with watching balloons, and Coyne’s anecdote about Kacey Musgraves dropping acid.

The frustrations start before the band take to the stage. Plainly it is better that Brixton Academy is safe for visitors now, but there must surely be a middle ground where those arriving half an hour before show time don’t have to queue for 50 minutes to enter. When the Flaming Lips take to the stage, 15 minutes late, there are still many hundreds outside, and big gaps in the crowd. Continue reading...