The Flaming Lips expand tour (Wellmont Theatre included)
by Andrew Sacher
The Flaming Lips at Jones Beach in 2011 (more by Dana (distortion) Yavin)
The Flaming Lips will be touring internationally this year, beginning with their big shows in Austin for SXSW this month, and they’ll make their way to the NYC area for a show on May 16 at The Wellmont Theatre in Montclair, NJ. Tickets for that show go on sale Friday (3/8) at noon. All tour dates are listed below.
The tour is in support of their thirteenth full length album, The Terror, which is due out on April 2 via Warner Brothers. The Terror is a depressingly existential concept album about the relationship (or lack thereof) of life and love. “We want, or wanted to believe that without love we would disappear,” explains Wayne Coyne in a press release, “The Terror is we know now, that even without love, life goes on… we just go on… there is no mercy killing.” It’s the kind of concept that we can imagine being taken on by a band 30 years into their career, and impressive to see the Lips doing something like this rather than copying their old sounds or fading away.
Musically, it’s one of the band’s noisiest albums since the ’90s, with their multi-layered psychedelia tightly packed into a claustrophobic container of sound. Like last year’s The Seer by Swans, it’s the type of record that takes you on a trip for the entire listen, but while Swans took you deep into the underworld, The Flaming Lips take you to Mercury, or year 3,000, or both. And while it’s more of an album-album than a song-album, it’s worth mentioning that The Terror‘s goal is best executed on its 13+ minute centerpiece; the wildly psychedelic “You Lust.”
All tour dates are listed, along with a video of The Flaming Lips performing “You Lust” live with Phantogram, and a recent pitchfork documentary on their 1999 classic The Soft Bulletin, are below…
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The Flaming Lips & Phantogram – “You Lust” at Hard Rock Casino in Biloxi
Pitchfork Classics – ‘The Soft Bulletin’
The Flaming Lips — 2013 Tour Dates
3-14-2013 Austin, TX, USA The Warner Sound, The Belmont
3-15-2013 Austin, TX, USA SXSW, Auditorium Shores
3-29-2013 Sao Paulo, Brazil Lollapalooza Brazil
4-28-2013 Kansas City, MO, USA Sprint Center*
4-29-2013 Indianapolis, IN, USA Egyptian Room at Old National Centre*
4-30-2013 Pittsburgh, PA, USA CONSOL Energy Center*
5-2-2013 Atlanta, GA, USA Aaron’s Amphitheatre at Lakewood*
5-3-2013 Nashville, TN, USA Bridgestone Arena*
5-4-2013 Chattanooga, TN, USA Track 29
5-5-2013 Memphis, TN, USA Beale St. Music Festival
5-10-2013 Napa, CA, USA Bottle Rock Festival
5-16-2013 Montclair, NJ Wellmont Theatre
5-20-2013 London, England, UK Roundhouse
5-21-2013 London, England, UK Roundhouse
5-22-2013 Brighton, England, UK Brighton Festival, Brighton Dome Concert Hall
5-24-2013 Paris, France Villette Sonique
6-14-2013 Hultsfred, Sweden Hultsfred Festival
6-15-2013 Aarhus, Denmark Northside Festival
7-11-2013 Raleigh, NC, USA Time Warner Cable Pavilion*
7-12-2013 Simpsonville, SC, USA Charter Amphitheatre at Heritage Park*
9-6-2013 Isle of Wight, England, UK Bestival
* – w/ The Black Keys
