Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Flaming Lips

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs return with their second album, Show Your Bones. The opening track (and single) “Gold Lion” is quality, but the real standout track is the brash “Phenomena,” in which the listener can imagine Karen O doing her best Mick Jagger impersonation while strutting around stage. Though the the album lacks the same sort of ballad that Fever to Tell provided with “Maps”, it’s still generally successful, and worth at least a few listens.

At War With the Mystics is the Flaming Lips’ first full-length effort since 2002’s Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, and it’s been a long four years for Lips fans. Though Mystics fails to reach instant-classic levels like Yoshimi and The Soft Bulletin did, there’s still plenty of quality songs - the opener, “Yeah Yeah Yeah Song” has some of the same spirit as Yoshimi’s “Do You Realize???”, and the followup, “Free Radicals”, is an amusing listen. “My Cosmic Autumn Rebellion” and “Pompeii Am Gotterdammerung” are built on brilliantly spacey instrumentals, and “It Overtakes Me / The Stars Are So Big…I Am So Small…Do I Stand A Chance?” has a multi-tiered structure in the same vein as the Beatles’ “Happiness is a Warm Gun”. Overall, the album is the Lips at their most playful, though hopefully this isn’t an indicator of a permanent trend away from the opuses of Yoshimi and Soft Bulletin.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Show Your Bones: **½

The Flaming Lips - At War With the Mystics: ****