The Flaming Lips

It’s 30 minutes to stage-time and Wayne Coyne, the enigmatic Flaming Lips frontman, is giving Hot Press a glimpse into what to expect from their performance, an opportunity afforded them by the luckless Jack White.

"Unfortunately, the White Stripes have cancelled because Jack White was in a minor car accident," he explains. "Someone ran into his car and the airbag went off and broke one of the fingers on his guitar-playing hand, so they had to cancel six weeks worth of shows. But they knew we were on the same bill as them and they asked us if we’d fill in. We love nothing more than to say ‘Sure, let’s do this thing’. I don’t know if every band can do it but we can actually play some White Stripes songs. We’ll dress up like them and really do it up. Even though we’re no replacement for The White Stripes, we’ll make up for it with some White Stripes songs and some White Stripes-isms while we’re doing some Flaming Lips songs."

"Some of our songs are very heavy, philosophical rants, mostly about death and about what does the universe mean. I sometimes think if we just sang our songs with just our words and music, instead of making people feel good, we’d just bum them out. To understand death is to understand life, so when I’m up there on stage, I try to give you as much life and as much happening that we can stand. Any more and I think it’s going to get dangerous," he chuckles. "I hope when people walk out of a Flaming Lips show that they think ‘Gosh, the world really is a good place. We just have to look and find it ourselves’."

Which is quite a build-up, I’m sure you’ll agree, but just when you thought The Flaming Lips were going to deliver "just" another jaw-dropping spectacle/drug-free trippathon/joyous celebration of life itself, they go you one million better.

"We’re not the White Stripes," Wayne explains helpfully to late arrivers and slow learners – the 20-odd dancers in animal suits, two giant jigging suns, skyful of balloons and general air of benevolent chaos on the smoke-and-glitter-strewn Main Stage having indicated as much already. But tonight, everything is absolutely in honour of the bi-coloured boy – and "everything" means everything, from the red and white T-shirts all the animals are wearing (hee!) to their blazing, siren-and-loudhailer-assisted cover of ‘Seven Nation Army’ (wow!) to their new tune, ‘Thank You Jack White For This Fiber Optic Jesus That You Gave Me’ (based, as explained earnestly by Wayne in technicolour detail, on a true story), to a massive, crazy ‘Happy Birthday’ for Jack ("Now, let’s all sing this with all the passion that such a beautiful song deserves").

Well, not all of tonight is about Jack and Meg: some of it is just about pure, untrammelled joy. Wayne, we learn, has arranged with Tim DeLaughter of The Polyphonic Spree – playing audibly loudly across the field on the Up stage – that the Spree will stop their gig long enough for all of us, and all of them, and all of the people in their tent, to have a big end-of-the-festival singalong – of ‘Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots’. Sadly, it’s rather crap (our fault, not theirs). But their set closer – a rendition of ‘Do You Realize??’ so overwhelmingly life-affirming you’re this close to having a lump in your throat – is given the mind-meltingly gargantuan visual accompaniment of Wayne mechanically inflating a twelve-foot red balloon, as drums roll breath-holdingly beneath, until it explodes in a shower of confetti.

"I know we could never replace Jack and Meg," apologises Wayne for the fourth time, "but thanks, you guys, for playing along with us tonight." Are you kidding? Thanks for the gig of a lifetime.

Eamon Sweeney