Same set, but in London. Photo: UK Observer

It was too hot at the Aragon Ballroom for lamby costumes last night (not that a few die-hards didn’t try). So guys and girls dressed as the Tin Woodsman and Dorothy danced along as the Wizard of Odds, Wayne Coyne, and the [lastfm link_type="artist_info"]Flaming Lips[/lastfm] played through their 1999 album “The Soft Bulletin.”

The hamster ball came out , and the balloons and the confetti. But as Coyne noted halfway through the show, their classic 1999 album is really about despair.  From “Race for the Prize” and “The Spiderbite Song” to “Feeling Yourself Disintegrate” and “Waitin’ for Superman,” these are songs about facing your mortality. The band’s performances bore that out,  and then leavened it with more hopeful fare, like “What is the Light?”

For their first encore, the band gave the packed Aragon a taste of their setlist for Sunday’s performance at the Dave Matthews Band Caravan. If “Brain Damage” and “Eclipse” are any indication, “The Dark Side Of The Moon” is going to be transplendent.

During the second encore, a friend commented, “he always sings it like it’s the last time.” And if you’re going to do that, do it on “Do You Realize?” Love and death, spectacle and intimacy. That’s the Flaming Lips.