Peace Sword
The title track was written for the sci-fi film *Ender’s Game*, while the remaining four songs were inspired by the film and the original book by Orson Scott Card. In many ways a suitable follow-up to the 2013 album *The Terror*, *Peace Sword* focuses The Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne by working with another writer’s imagination. The limitations imposed by this process free Coyne to worry more about his songs\' sound and emotional tenor than the overriding story. As a result, tracks like “Peace Sword (Open Your Heart)” and the grand ballad “Is the Black at the End Good?” feel complete underneath all the pretty and dazzling effects. “If They Move, Shoot ‘Em” slithers away from straightforward writing into a subliminal track that sounds like a movie’s most devastating scene. “Think Like a Machine, Not a Boy” brings out Coyne’s lifelong love of Pink Floyd by crafting the sort of plaintive, static, and beautiful melody that’s always been one of his strengths.
The Peace Sword EP originated as another one of the Flaming Lips’ one-off larks: they were asked to contribute to the soundtrack of the upcoming science-fiction epic Ender’s Game. *Peace Sword—much like Ender's Game itself—*is thus a proverbial fight test, a space where the Lips’ light and dark energies square off in battle, sometimes within the same song.
A stopgap EP that, given the chance to run at full length, could’ve been yet another defining record.
Though this 37-minute six-tracker is prone to lengthy bouts of mood-setting, the fragile ‘Is The Black At The End Good’ is Coyne’s most uplifting ballad since ‘Do You Realize??’ and ‘Peace Sword (Open Your Heart)’ is a psych-orchestral redemption that sheds Coyne’s recent shroud of bleakness like Obi-Wan Kenobi uncloaking.
The Flaming Lips, in all their trippy, confetti-laden glory, are the perfect band to score a sci-fi film.
The Flaming Lips - Peace Sword review: The dream is ending, and the peace sword doesn't seem so peaceful...