By Armando

More than three decades since the rock band first emerged into the scene, The Flaming Lips continue to fascinate, with outlandish show and vibrant performances.

On Friday night, the spark is as apparent as ever. Playing to a packed and excited fans at the Harley-Davidson Roadhouse in one of the most energetic stages in this year’s Summerfest in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the band continued to be a pleasant surprise with a show that felt more like a big party.

Right from the start, when band opened their show with a cover of Richard Strauss’ “Also sprach Zarathustra, Op. 30”, the band put on a massive visual spectacle, with giant balloons rolling through the crowd amidst the festive rain of confetti.

This continued on with their usual tour opener “Race for the Prize,” the band’s first single from their 1999 ninth studio album The Soft Bulletin. With it sees lead singer Wayne Coyne lifting a big sign that said “**** Yeah Summerfest” which only hyped the crowd even more.

Throughout the night, the band played more than a dozen songs including “Fight Test”, a song from their 2003 EP of the same name, as well as “The W.A.N.D. (The Will Always Negates Defeat)” and “The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song (With All Your Power)”, both from their 2006 album “At War with the Mystics”.

Other outrageously fun highlights include Coyne playfully wearing gigantic globes which projected layers on each hand as a rendition of Star Spangled Banner played in the background, and on another with Coyne rolling through the crowd in a giant transparent bubble while the band played David Bowie’s “Space Oddity.”

The band closed the show with encore performance of “Do You Realize??”, undoubtedly one of the band’s more well known songs, thereby ending the night on a high note, proving once again that The Flaming Lips is still one of the most exciting bands right now.

Related: Summerfest 2018 Kicks Off Wednesday