Kylie, The Flaming Lips, Robbie and Gary

With the site out of action for a week or so, there are a few videos I didn't get the chance to mention in a timely and orderly manner. Funnily enough, they're all live performances.

Kylie - Wonderful Life (Live Lounge cover)


Kylie's simmering, orchestral take on the Hurts single is simultaneously uplifting and unsettling. A rare thing of beauty. It's also available on the Radio One website if the YouTube link fails.


The Flaming Lips - The Sparrow Looks Up At The Machine


The Flaming Lips' Embryonic is still one of my favourite "mood albums" of the last 12 months, and this buzzing space symphony is one of the standout tracks. Despite the shaky-cam direction, the above performance video (from Pitchfork) provides a rare opportunity to watch this radical band play their instruments without all the ridiculous animal costumes and fake blood.


Gary Barlow and Robbie Williams - Shame (Strictly Performance)


Their first live performance in more than a decade. The watchful, parental eyes of Mr Barlow seem to be having a positive effect on Robbie - who is trying desperately to contain all of those bad habits and vaudeville tics he's picked up during his solo career. Quite a heart-warming little reunion, all told.

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Karen O's farmyard impression hour

In the first video from The Flaming Lips (excellent) double album, Embryonic, Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs delivers a series of animal impressions while an enthusiastic young lady in a bikini performs interpretive dance.

The Flaming Lips - I Can Be A Frog

Is it me, or is this just a musical version of the following?

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A big hand for the Flaming Lips

I've spent the last couple of days trapped in some sort of 1970s prog rock nightmare, as I absorb the new "opus" from Muse and a double album of freaky wig-out nonsense by The Flaming Lips. I now refuse to listen to any song that doesn't last more than seven minutes and feature a zither.

The Muse record the campest thing you will ever hear, even if you are Kylie Minogue drinking a white wine spritzer at a Doris Day retrospective in Graceland.

Embryonic, meanwhile, is the result of (dear God, no) a six-month-long jam session in the Flaming Lips' studio. "We got kind of caught up in and kind of inspired and energized by these weird jams that we were doing," Wayne Coyne told Rolling Stone earlier this year. "A lot of them turned out better and stranger and more interesting than some of the songs that we had written."

The thing is: He's absolutely right. This is the best Flaming Lips album since The Soft Bulletin. It's chock full of spooky electric buzzing, scaling guitar loops, hypnotic bass lines and a dolorous, other-worldly tone. Special guests include MGMT (aka the Flaming Lips Lite) and Karen O from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, who provides yelps and squeals on a couple of tracks. Yes, really.

The ideal way to listen to the album is on a pair of chunky headphones in a darkened bedsit while burning six joss sticks, two candles and a "funny" cigarette. You may also want to wear a paisley neckscarf and tie beads in your hair.

Or, like I did, you can experience it while putting together a new table you've just bought from John Lewis. Either option is fine.

Here are the band previewing Convinced Of The Hex on US TV last night. It's pretty representative of the rest of the album, so if you're mesmerised by its dark, loping groove, you could do worse than checking out the album when its released on 12th October.

Flaming Lips - Convinced Of The Hex [live on the Colbert Report]


Apparently, you can stream the whole Flaming Lips album on the Colbert Report website until 21st September, but I can't find the darn thing anywhere.

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