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Two musical forces, The Beta Band and The Flaming Lips, joined together for a co-headline show at The Piece Hall that took the audience on a weird, wonderful and utterly magical journey.
The Beta Band, whose The Three E.P.’s was immortalised in High Fidelity when John Cusack mesmerises a room full of record buyers with Dry the Rain, delivered a set that ebbed and flowed effortlessly through their catalogue. Their hypnotic, multi-layered songs built gradually into euphoric crescendos, with the expansive instrumentals proving every bit as captivating as the singalong moments. They closed with all four members pounding away on percussion, creating something that felt almost tribal – primal, powerful and completely absorbing.
Aside from an impressive collection of instruments, their stage production was relatively understated, which was the complete opposite of what was about to unfold.
The Flaming Lips transformed The Piece Hall into an avant-garde, technicolour fever dream designed to overwhelm the senses in the best possible way. Within minutes, frontman Wayne Coyne – part psychedelic preacher, part Willy Wonka ringmaster – had filled the stage with four giant pink robots, fired countless confetti cannons and unleashed a swarm of giant inflatable balls into the crowd. Subtlety has never been part of The Flaming Lips’ vocabulary, and as the night unfolded, each song seemed determined to outdo the last in glorious, joyful absurdity.
Against the backdrop of the historic Piece Hall on a warm summer evening, the spectacle felt even more surreal. Coyne repeatedly praised the venue, calling it one of the finest places he’d played in more than 40 years of touring, before gleefully pointing out that Sir Tom Jones was the next act to play there. Had his mother known, he joked, she’d have been on the first flight over.
A career-spanning set proved both euphoric and life-affirming, with a thunderous rendition of Black Sabbath’s War Pigs providing one of the evening’s biggest highs. But with The Flaming Lips, the music is only part of the experience. Their shows celebrate imagination, childlike wonder and the simple joy of shared escapism.
A huge inflatable sign declared, “Fuck Yeah Piece Hall,” and perfectly summed up the night where reality was happily suspended for a couple of hours, a fitting conclusion to another unforgettable evening at one of the country’s most magical venues.