Still the Balloons

excerpts from the U.K. music magazine Careless Talk Costs
Lives

(from a review of the Bright Eyes album, 'Lifted - or,
The Story is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground'):

If he's doing this so that pretty girls with sallow eyes
and big hearts will give him a hug better, then I don't
think I can forgive him, but at least I'd understand.  But
if he's doing this out of spite, a revenge fantasy against
his own successes, then he owes himself something more
than lowering himself to the level of careerists like
Smith, Adams or Dando.

You bring the whiskey and your guitar, I'll bring tapes
and a notebook.  We'll get drunk, we'll tell stories, and
we'll slap one another on the back every time one of us
starts to slide.


(from a review of a Flaming Lips concert):

[Wayne] Coyne grabs an unwieldy contraption and shoots
dry ice over us.  Suddenly, all I can taste is incense.
Through the thick mist, mirrorballs reflect an
irridescent strobe, producing a transcendental otherworldly
moment of unlikely calm.  Realisation and serenity through
dissonance.  The Flaming Lips are a summation of everything
I've ever wanted. Happiness does indeed make you cry.
Michael Stipe would kill to produce stuff like this.

Returning for the encore, Coyne seems genuinely moved by
the raptures of the crowd.  "It's like a drug, isn't it?".
It certainly is.  The Flaming Lips wreak gentle devastation
with my mind and my whole fucking soul.  And still the
balloons fly.