Last Thursday, July 8 the Flaming Lips performed alongside Spoon, Tokyo Police Club, and Fang Island at Toronto’s Molson Amphitheatre.

For those of you who have not been to a Lips show, I can only describe it as a whirlwind of Christmas meets Halloween, where whimsical bliss collides with the weird and wonderful.

Confetti. Giant balloons. Giant balloons filled with confetti. An army of dancing orange foot solidiers. Captain catfish and a caterpillar with butterfly wings. Wayne Coyne’s trademark bubble boy device. These are just a few of the things you can expect from one of their spectacles.

With Spoon, Tokyo Police Club, and Fang Island opening for The Lips, the night was a mini festival of sorts. But as soon as the giant naked lady projected on a 50 foot screen at the back of the stage gave birth to Wayne and the boys via a working vagina opening, the night felt like it had truly begun.

The Lips played highlights from their latest, Embryonic, as well as classic material from At War with the Mystics, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, The Soft Bulletin, and Transmissions from the Satellite Heart.

Here they are playing everyone’s favourite indie-pop ballad, “Do You Realize?”

I once knew this kid back in grade 6 who fainted during English class after reading some gory description in a Stephen King novel.

Perhaps this kid was more sensitive to violence than the average bear… or maybe he just wasn’t desensitized to it like the rest of us.

In any case, this kid (who I suppose is now an adult unless he discovered a non-aging serum and is forever a 12-year-old boy) would definitely lose his shit after viewing just 7 seconds of the new Flaming Lips video for “The Sparrow Looks Up at the Machine”.

Like The Lips’ previous music video for “Powerless”, this NSFW video for the third single off last year’s Embryonic has some deeply disturbing scenes of torture that are not for the faint of heart.

I don’t want to give too much away, but Tim Roth’s ear-slicing scene in Reservoir Dogs comes to mind here.

Throw in a maniacal monkey and a giant fur-ball with a vagina that “swallows” art (I couldn’t make this shit up even if I tried) and you’ve got another mind-fuck of a Lips video.

The Flaming Lips play Toronto’s Molson Amphitheatre with Spoon and Tokyo Police Club on July 8th.

[Via P4k TV]