The Flaming Lips return to all-out maniacal psychedelia in Manchester

For a start, The Terror - their thirteenth full-length, released back in 2013 - was uncharacteristically brooding affair, the whole thing imbued with a sense of paranoia and melancholy as frontman Wayne Coyne tried to make musical sense of the collapse of his 25-year relationship. Their live shows remained eye-catching, particularly if their last visit to Manchester in May of 2014 is anything to go by, but some of their most iconic stage props - those laser-shooting giant hands, or Coyne’s vehicle of choice, his giant translucent hamster ball - were missing in action.

In the intervening years, there’s been plenty of evidence that the Lips of old remain alive and kicking, from their unlikely collaborations with Miley Cyrus to their daft song-for-song cover of The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, With a Little Help from My Fwendz. As they return this month with their newest LP, though, they’re trying on another guise not readily associated with them. Oczy Mlody’s title is Polish for ‘eyes of the young’, but the phrase jumped out at Coyne because the words looked like ‘oxy melody’ - oxy as in oxycodone. That particular phrase suits the music, which is uncharacteristically woozy and subdued for the Lips. It’s very, very pretty, too, but there’s still a fair old chasm to be bridged if the material’s going to lend itself to easy integration with the group’s typically dazzling onstage modus operandi.

Plus, as the band rock up at the end of one of the darkest political weekends of the past few decades, this sold-out at the Manchester Arena tonight (22nd Jan) need the Oklahomans to be shiny and bright. Happily, they quickly go about making that brief sound like a gross understatement. Classic opener “Race for the Prize” comes complete with an incendiary rainbow light show and showers of confetti, and by the second song - another fan favourite, “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Pt. 1” - the usual supporting cast of giant inflatables have made their way onstage, aliens, goblins and a smiling sun all in amongst them.

With The Terror dropping off of the setlist entirely, we get a Lips show that combines the best of the post-Ronald Jones catalogue - The Soft Bulletin, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots and 2006’s At War with the Mystics are all represented - with a clutch of new cuts from Oczy Mlody. The latter tracks mesh well with the vintage material and accordingly, there’s no softening of the edges like last time out; instead, the plastic ball returns for a cover of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity”, and Coyne straps a strobe light to himself during “The W.A.N.D.”

There’s moments where the new material - still evidently unfamiliar to this audience - allows for a breather, particularly the glacially lovely “How??” In the end, though, measured reflection is not what this group specialise in and their field of expertise, manic escapism, feels more vital than ever at the minute; what a delight, then, to see Coyne astride a neon unicorn tonight, and a whole room screaming “love!” before a never-more-euphoric “Do You Realize??” Change nothing, Flaming Lips. Go nowhere.