Two years ago, The Flaming Lips’ Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots tour landed in this very venue with all the grace and glitter of a band reborn in celebration of its 20th anniversary. Strangely, that same tour is still going, now inching towards its 23rd birthday. That first night felt like something close to transcendence — giant robots, bubble balls, and existential joy stitched together with purpose. But on their return to Manchester’s O2 Apollo this weekend, the seams were starting to show.
Don’t get us wrong: the spectacle is still there. Massive pink robots loomed. Confetti cannons exploded with childlike abandon. There were flower masks, dancing aliens, and at one point a disembodied floating eyes and mouth gazed out onto the crowd. But somewhere in the chaos, the cohesion that once tied it all together began to fray.
Opening again with Fight Test, the band launched into the full Yoshimi album performance with their usual gusto. The highlights remain the same. Yoshimi Pt. 1 had the crowd karate-chopping once more with accompanying hi-ya’s. Ego Tripping and Are You A Hypnotist provided a pair of back-to-back, offbeat singalongs before the existential crisis of Do You Realise?? and All We Have Is Now bubbles up. Both tracks brush against the void, steeped in mortality and melancholy, yet somehow The Flaming Lips turn that existential dread into something strangely comforting. It’s their gift: to cradle darkness in colour and chaos, and send you home feeling lighter for it. But there was an odd sense of déjà vu. Not in the nostalgic, heart-swelling way, but more like a touring production stuck in loop.
It’s clear the Lips are trying to keep things fresh, tweaking the props and switching out moving parts, but some of it feels like gimmicks for gimmicks’ sake. The giant hamster ball? Retired (for this evening at least). In its place, a series of inflatable props that, while colourful, felt more like filler than flourish. The second set was packed with some of their most beloved material — She Don’t Use Jelly, Waitin’ for a Superman, The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song — but the flow often stalled. Gaps between tracks, unnecessary prop faffing, and on occasion, long rambling introductions from Coyne chipped away at the momentum. There were bursts of brilliance, but they came slightly in spite of the staging, rather than because of it.
There was a stunning exception though: Flowers of Neptune 6. Pulled from their more recent material, the track floated in like a cosmic lullaby. Stripped of spectacle, its dreamy, reverb-laced arrangement offered a welcome pause. Vulnerable, airy, and haunting. And, in contrast to our earlier criticisms, this was one moment where Coyne‘s long introduction really worked. The warm, fuzzy backstory gave context to a newer song some in the crowd may not have known, and immediately endeared them to it. A wise move, and a reminder that when handled right, a bit of rambling can go a long way. It reminded us that beneath the masks and mayhem, The Flaming Lips still know how to write songs that cut straight to the soul.
But Wayne Coyne’s relentless need for crowd feedback (“Come on! Keep going! Keep it going!”) bordered on overkill. Being at the front, you could hear the crowd noise folded back into his PA mix, like a feedback loop of forced joy. At times it felt less like he was feeding off our energy and more like he needed convincing we were still with him.
And yet… we were with him.
For all the wonky transitions and inflatable oddities, the crowd never lost heart. If anything, it’s the love not the lasers that keeps people coming back. The audience buzzed with goodwill, arms around shoulders, eyes lit up, strangers sharing inside jokes and neon dreams. The Flaming Lips have always drawn a certain tribe, people in it for the joy, the weirdness, the shared euphoria, not just the gimmicks. That collective spirit, that sense of being part of something fleeting and special, is still very much alive.
They closed, of course, with Race for the Prize, and in that moment, it all made sense again. Confetti rained down. A rainbow of LED’s burst across the back wall. That big inflatable read “FUCK YEAH MANCHESTER,” and it felt, finally, earned. For a few minutes, the magic snapped back into focus. You could feel the love, the wonder, the old spark.
Because when The Flaming Lips do hit that sweet spot. When the visuals serve the emotion and not the other way around, they’re still one of the most transporting live acts on the planet.
Go Places Do Things 