“Hey, who wants a button?” yells Shannon McArdle, offering round a bag of Mendoza Line badges with a smile to melt snow. As charm offensives go, this Athens-born/NY-based quintet pulls out all the stops. On-stage banter flows. Guitarist Tim Bracy drawls eccentric but engaging blabber in a delicious Georgia drawl. And with a ramshackle edge to their rolling country-indie, they give the inviting proposition that, hey, we could be playing on stage too.

Whether anyone could just plug in and replicate The Mendoza Line’s yearning magic, though, is doubtful. Last year’s Lost In Revelry cranked up their dazzling qualities by the yard. At turns sunny and good-natured, at others red raw, embittered and heartbroken, the band navigate a rich sound?densely knotted guitars, lap-steels and pianos?matched only by the richness of experience. As “Something Dark” and “My Tattered Heart And Torn Parts” demonstrate, clearly this is a band who’ve lived and lost a lot.

Nevertheless, as the exquisitely lyrical “What Ever Happened To You?” shows, they don’t go for brooding angst either. Instead, intelligence and wisdom is their compass after emotional storms wreak havoc. A similar level-headed calm informs their back-porch country, too. The gently lilting “A Damn Good Disguise”, played tonight with absolute perfection, is hammock-swaying languor incarnate. Elsewhere, “The Queen of England” hits a mournful juncture somewhere between Dylan and Mark Eitzel. While the astonishing “The Triple Bill Of Shame” weaves a scathing tale of thwarted ambition around Tim’s slack-jaw delivery and slow-crawling lap-steels.

At the other end of the scale, though, The Mendoza Line crash and clatter like a keening anorak indie band. The breathless rush of “In Your Hands” and “Mistakes Were Made”, all fuzzy rushes and one-string guitar solos, bizarrely recall sub-C-86 obscurities The Flatmates. This is no bad thing. Balancing the glum with the glad ensures nobody settles too comfortably in their hazy Americana glow. And besides, The Mendoza Line’s exuberant stage presence kind of warrants ramalama guitar blasts. Set closer “It’ll Be The Same Without You” nails down stomping pop perfection to the max.

Wear the badge with pride.

The Flaming Lips

Manchester Academy

THURSDAY JANUARY 16, 2003

Pandas, aliens, gorillas, giant rabbits and Jetsonesque robots. Enormous spinning glitterballs spewing kaleidoscopic prisms. Silver confetti, fluorescent strobes, glove puppets and vistas of Teletubbies. At the centre of this Fellini-meets-Barbarella-via-Trigger Happy TV weirdness lurks Wayne Coyne, dappered up like a carnival barker on a mission. “People often live their lives looking ahead,” opines the fortysomething leader of America’s foremost exponents of mind-melting symphonic cyber-pop, “or to the past, when things were better. What happens is people forget how to live right now, for the moment. And who knows? Tonight may be the last show we ever do. I say you’ve gotta make the fuckin’ moment last. Make right now matter.”

As statement of intent, the nub of Coyne’s philosophy can be traced directly to his father’s death during the making of the Lips’ 1995 album, Clouds Taste Metallic (the point at which their wilfully freakish psych-rock shifted into an altogether more daring realm of sonic adventure), and shored up by the death-triggering triumph of last year’s stunning 10th album and Uncut poll-topper, Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots.

If the latter was the Oklahoma trio’s attempt to glean meaning and joy from unfathomable cosmic design, then tonight’s live experience is the physical manifestation of defiant struggle, of hope forever sprouting eternal. These days, Lips shows bubble with unmatched communal warmth. This heat?from fans dancing on stage in $500 furry costumes to Coyne leading a throng-a-long of “Happy Birthday” to two random crowd-goers?may not have been what Pete Townshend exactly envisaged when he dreamt up that doomed utopia of band/punter communion, Lifehouse, but its effect is as curiously exhilarating as anything I’ve seen on stage.

Their music?like the incongruous optical riot?shouldn’t really work, but does so to glorious effect: sadly rippling piano effects over stumbling hip hop beats wrapped in sensory-shifting symphonic dubscapes, all strained with that strangely suspenseful Coyne tremble that suggests the answers to the Big Questions are within reach somewhere over the next cloud. The most beautiful, fragile moments (“All We Have Is Now”; “In The Morning Of The Magicians”; “A Spoonful Weighs A Ton”) are counterpointed by ebullient crashes through the classic “She Don’t Use Jelly”, Pink Floyd’s “Lucifer Sam” and the megaphone-wielding “Lightning Strikes The Postman”, but it’s the likes of “Race For The Prize” and the magnificent “Do You Realize??” that truly transfigure. Honourable mentions go to auspicious support, British Sea Power, and Badly Drawn Boy, whose unheralded three-song prelude to the Lips’ appearance came with a much-applauded Joe Strummer tribute during “You Were Right”. No stealing of thunder from the main act, though. The Flaming Lips, genuinely humbled by the affection they inspire, urge you to love, live and fill thy cup. Somewhere, there’s a panda costume with your name on it.

Arthur Lee & Love

Royal Festival Hall, London

WEDNESDAY JANUARY 15, 2003

On paper, Arthur Lee is an unlikely recruit to the rock heritage industry. In a hilarious rant in NME recently, Lee claimed Brian Wilson, Mick Jagger and former Beatle “Paul McCarthy” all “stink”. “I’m tired of playing that old stuff,” he said, “I’m going to put Forever Changes out of people’s minds with this new album I have. It’s the best rock album there’s ever going to be.”

It’s been noted before that Arthur Lee can be a little schizophrenic. Even so, the enthusiasm with which he is singing, “This is the time and life that I am living,” as if 1968 never ended, still comes as something of a shock. For here is Lee and the latest of Love’s countless incarnations (the LA band Baby Lemonade, ostensibly), plus string and horn sections, ploughing through the entirety of Forever Changes with a deftness and passion that would be unlikely in far keener revivalists.

Lee is, in a way, the luckiest and unluckiest of ’60s rock legends. His complete lack of success for 30 years may have left him relatively poor and bitter, but it has also ensured that his artistic vision remains untainted by the commercial exigencies of the ’70s and ’80s. His cowboy hat, Stars & Stripes bandanna and white fringed shirt aren’t historical props, they’re the evidence of an aesthetic code that hasn’t materially altered since February 1968, when he sat in the hills overlooking LA and contemplated the hippie dream, and society in general, beginning to fall apart.

Remarkably, the spirit of Forever Changes is sustained through this formal recital, right down to its deceitful prettiness, its prickly intimations of bad trips and imminent crashes. The show begins with Lee and his core band blasting through a suitably ragged selection, notably a needling version of “Your Mind And We Belong Together” that reveals his wounded soul vocals are miraculously undamaged. Then Forever Changes is performed, in order, from the mariachi fanfares of Bryan MacLean’s “Alone Again Or” through to a devastating version of “You Set The Scene”.

The obvious parallel is with Brian Wilson’s Pet Sounds shows last year. But if Wilson’s triumph was one of poignancy and a legacy reclaimed, Lee’s success is more assertive, a display of musical virility that seems undimmed. The mixture of imprecise yearning and paranoia which characterises Forever Changes is perfectly reproduced, helped by the fact that Lee is far more attuned to these youthful anxieties than the average 57-year-old. Particularly outstanding are the incantations of “The Red Telephone”, with the orchestra used sparingly and sensitively, never cluttering up the arrangements with slush. Eventually they troop off, and Lee returns with Baby Lemonade for another smash-and-grab raid on his archives that features a great, psych-garage hack through “My Flash On You”, a moving “Always See Your Face” (plenty of Love Four Sail gets an airing), and a version of “Singing Cowboy” featuring Graham Coxon (“Gram Caxton!” announces Lee, bewildered or mischievous) on extra guitar. Finally, one of the fabled new songs is revealed, a bizarre kiss-off to the States and hymn of praise to the UK that features Lee animatedly conducting the orchestra and a bagpiper in full regalia. His happiness at playing new material is infectious, but unfortunately “My Anthem” is cursed by its peculiar resemblance to Slade’s “Run Run Away”; not quite the quicksilver charmer we might have imagined.

Hence Lee’s dilemma, one he’s having to face much later than most of his contemporaries. How to reconcile an ongoing career when your fans?entirely justifiably on this evidence?will damn your new songs with, at best, polite tolerance? Lee’s ingenuous trust in his genius and his faith in antiquated rock’n’roll values elevates this show far beyond historical re-enactment. But paradoxically, it may also compel him to see his own creative future unrealistically. “The time that I’ve been given’s such a little while/And the things that I must do consist of more than style,” he sings in the apposite “You Set The Scene”. Still, after three decades of hardship, bitterness, trauma, even imprisonment, it’ll be hard to begrudge him one more chance to prove himself.