The Flaming Lips
The Fortitude Music Hall, Brisbane
Wednesday, 5th February 2025
All photos by Chris Searles (@christopher_searles)
The first thing you notice at a Flaming Lips concert isn’t the band. It’s the crowd. The Fortitude Music Hall—by no means an intimate venue—is absolutely heaving, packed to the rafters with sequins, spangles, vividly dyed hair, and outfits that teeter between festival chic and full-blown psychedelic cosplay. It’s as if someone detonated a glitter bomb in a vintage store. This is the beautiful, unspoken permission slip of The Flaming Lips universe: love, unity, and unfiltered self-expression.
Before the show even starts, the atmosphere is set with a touch of local homage—The Go-Betweens drift through the speakers, a nod to Brisbane’s own musical heritage. It’s a small detail, but a telling one. At each stop on this tour, between sets, only local music is played. It’s a simple, thoughtful move, the kind that signals a band who are less interested in just turning up, playing, and leaving, and more in creating a fleeting, communal utopia for the night.
The band stroll onstage to rapturous cheers, Wayne Coyne beaming like a man who still can’t quite believe this is his life. He’s dressed like Willy Wonka on a particularly whimsical day—wild curls, a suit that straddles the line between ‘dapper’ and ‘chaotic genius’. They kick off with ‘Fight Test’, the opening track of Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, confirming that yes, they are playing the album in full, and in order. Four enormous pink inflatables appear on stage, slowly swelling into the unmistakable figures from the Yoshimi album cover. They waddle and jiggle, appearing to be having the kind of ecstatic experience that usually requires chemical intervention.
Then—'Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Pt. 1’—and the place erupts. Seasoned fans know exactly when to pull out their best karate moves. The lyrics, displayed in huge type on the backdrop, ensure that no one, regardless of memory or sobriety levels, is left behind in the communal singalong. This, of course, is The Flaming Lips standard fare. The confetti cannons, the lasers, the inflatables, the gigantic disco ball hypnotism, the streamer guns—it’s all here. But what sets this show apart is its sheer, relentless generosity.
Coyne spends much of the night chatting to the audience, an unusually warm and unguarded frontman. He doesn’t just acknowledge the crowd’s energy—he seems genuinely moved by it. The Flaming Lips have been doing this since 1983, and yet here he is, still visibly delighted by the ridiculous magic of it all. There is something wonderfully fantastical about their shows—part psychedelic trip, part hug-fuelled love-in. At one point, he tells the audience to turn to the people they came with and tell them they love them. And, remarkably, they do. Strangers embrace. I hug my friend. Then I hug the strangers next to me. The general atmosphere of goodwill becomes so potent that even the usual post-pandemic awkwardness around physical contact dissolves.
And then, just as the giant inflatable rainbow on stage reaches its full height, they launch into ‘Do You Realize??’. The room transforms into one massive, blissed-out choir. Confetti shaped like tiny, spiky-haired figures rains from the ceiling, a lovely, absurd little detail. Giant bouncy balls float across the crowd, ricocheting from head-to-head. For a moment, adulthood evaporates entirely.
They leave the stage to thunderous applause, only to return for an entire second set, launched by ‘She Don’t Use Jelly’, their gloriously oddball '90s hit, accompanied by yet more bouncy balls and yet more delight. Songs from across their entire discography are expertly and enthusiastically delivered, with special mention of ‘Flowers Of Neptune 6’, during which Wayne dons a humungous daisy headdress and regales the crowd with a detailed story of Kacey Musgraves taking acid and dancing with glow bugs.
It’s rare to walk out of a gig feeling lighter than when you arrived, but that’s precisely The Flaming Lips effect. The show ends, the lights come up, and people are still beaming. The world outside may still be what it is, but for a couple of hours, inside this room, everything feels a little bit brighter.
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