Modest Mouse and The Flaming Lips make an oddly perfect pair at Stage AE
Some weird combinations just make sense once you experience them. Like peanut butter and pickles. Or like indie rock bands Modest Mouse and The Flaming Lips.
The two tried-and-true acts, along with opener Friko, proved to be a thrilling bill at Stage AE on Pittsburgh’s North Shore on Saturday night, attracting a teeming — and screaming — crowd to the outdoor venue.
Between them, the three bands span a range of generations. The Flaming Lips and Modest Mouse rocketed to fame in the early 2000s and Friko formed in 2019. But they all embody a timeless formula for indie rock success: killer guitar and a big, generous dash of weird.
The Chicago-based Friko were up first, playing a 25-minute set that seemed even shorter because it contained only a handful of longer, more complex songs. With fuzzy guitar, constant musical changeups that galvanized their long songs and the breathy bellow of singer Nico Kapetan, they left a good impression on fans of the more seasoned bands.
Fresh off of throwing the first pitch at Saturday’s Pirates game, Modest Mouse took the stage exactly on time and with gusto. They played a drum-tight set of almost precisely an hour and 15 minutes, and it was to their benefit — the time constraint kept the set moving with peaks and valleys, starting with the anthemic “Dark Center of the Universe.”
Lead singer Isaac Brock, who somehow survived wearing a jacket in the balmy weather for multiple songs, was in rare form. While taciturn when it comes to crowd banter, he let the music speak for itself with his signature howling, and barking vocals. He played his guitar with an almost violent enthusiasm and imbued even the most out-there lyrics with a sense of urgency.
Modest Mouse’s biggest hit, the Grammy Award-winning 2004 song “Float On,” was placed at song 10 of a 15-song set and didn’t even get that big of a crowd response. That may seem strange, but it makes sense that an experimental indie band with such a strong following would attract fans who are just as excited to hear the deep cuts. Though singing along with that chorus is pretty irresistible.
That being said, outside of “Float On” and the thunderous “Bury Me With It,” most of the earworms in Saturday night’s set were musical and not lyrical. For example, the serpentine guitar riff in “Doin’ the Cockroach” and Brock’s interwoven banjo part in “Bukowski.”
The lyrics did fight for supremacy in late-set highlight “Transmitting Receiving,” where Brock recited a litany of objects while the distorted screech of the musical landscape behind him built up anxiously. They finished up with upbeat “The View” while rainbow stage lights lit up the night, perhaps a preview for what would come next.
Because if you like rainbows, boy do I have a band for you.
The Flaming Lips are known for their elaborate stage shows, and it’s easy to see why — they employed everything a 10-year-old girl would want at a birthday party, minus the cake.
After the band was introduced by strobing lights and the instrumental opener “Sleeping on the Roof,” the dapper Wayne Coyne and his band took the stage to sing the catchy and psychedelic “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots.” Naturally, giant inflatable pink robots made an appearance, and the crowd watched them dance through the first of several confetti cannon showers.
Coyne is a frontman dedicated to bringing positivity and fun to every show, constantly urging the audience to keep screaming and cheering. The lyrics to the songs were all printed in giant letters on the screen behind the band to make singing along easy, and the crowd obliged the whole night.
While they never gained massive chart success, The Flaming Lips have a dedicated following and several songs that a lot of people would recognize, from 1994’s “She Don’t Use Jelly” to the romantic and melancholy “Do You Realize??” Both songs found their way into the 13-song set that the band played Saturday night.
“I think this may be the coolest, best concert freakout of the summer, right?” Coyne declared early on. The crowd enthusiastically agreed.
“Thank you for being loud and so happy tonight,” he said multiple times.
Also keeping the lights flashing in bright colors were the effervescent Chemical Brothers cover “The Golden Path,” which brought a grinning inflatable sun to the stage to dance with Coyne; and “The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song (With All Your Power),” which was one of those glorious, life-affirming moments that are the reason that live music is just unbeatable.
For the encore, American-flag-cape-clad Coyne recalled Brock to the stage for a sort of double-tribute. He talked about friends of his older brothers who were drafted and killed in Vietnam. “This song that we’re going to do, by a group called Black Sabbath, somehow they were able to capture and express this frustration, this anger, this impossibleness of young people going off to fight this horrible war.”
It was also a tribute to their “freak brother” Ozzy Osbourne, who died last month. The crowd was louder than the two singers at times during the roiling cover of “War Pigs,” but the words lifted just as high into the air as the confetti, and Coyne and Brock exchanged a hug at the song’s end.
The Flaming Lips finished out the night with more rainbows, a blizzard of confetti and Coyne singing “Race for the Prize” inside a giant bubble amongst synths and cymbal crashes. As the band waved goodnight, Louis Armstrong’s recording of “What a Wonderful World” played over the loudspeakers, and it felt like the perfect way to sum up a great show.
Alexis Papalia is a TribLive staff writer. She can be reached at apapalia@triblive.com.
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