Photo credit: Oscar Lopez/For the Sun-Times

Sunday night in Union Park never looked quite like this. Large red and yellow balloons floated across a crowd of almost 20,000, while a man in a giant rubber ball rolled across the sea of humanity as confetti rained down from the sky.

The Flaming Lips brought their brand of psychedelic rock to Chicago’s Union Park Sunday evening to close out the 2009 edition of the Pitchfork Music Festival, and spared no expense in creating a spectacle. But as entertaining a live act The Flaming Lips are, many in attendance hoped to hear a Lips set list unlike any other.

The Flaming Lips were supposed to take part in the “Write The Night: Set lists by request” series that Tortoise, The Jesus Lizard, Yo La Tengo and Built To Spill similarly played on Pitchfork’s opening Friday night, which allowed concert ticket-buyers to vote on the band’s set list. But soon after the get-go when the Lips played a brand new track from the upcoming album Embryonic, which was not available for the vote, it was apparent the band called an audible.

After an explosive version of the new track, “Silver Trembling Hands,” Lips front man Wayne Coyne told the audience that the band doesn’t need a list to know what the fans want to hear. He did say that the Lips would try to play their top 10 most popular tunes, but that didn’t really happen.

This is not to fault the Lips. They did dig deeper, though ever so slightly, into their back catalogue to play some of their older, more obscure cuts. “Bad Days,” from Clouds Taste Metallic, which they hasn’t been played since 1999, was dedicated to Sun-Times music writer Jim DeRogatis and was number 25 on the “Write The Night” master list, which had the songs ranked by fan votes. Also played was their punk-meets-avant garde tune “Mountainside” from the 1990 album In A Priest Driven Ambulance and post-Yoshimi… leaked studio outtake “Enthusiasm For Life (Defeats Internal, Existential Fear).”

None of this would have been a problem if the Lips hadn’t flip-flopped on their decision to play the “Write The Night” set in the first place. When initially booked for the festival, it was reported the band would take fan requests. Soon after, the Lips changed their mind. Then again only a few weeks later, the band went back on their decision and decided to open up their set list to the fans.

But what appeared almost as a copout live on stage could have been the best decision. Coyne stated the number of each song on the master list after playing them. Many of the Lips songs that have been in rotation for their past few tours, including “Yeah Yeah Yeah Song” from 2006’s At War With The Mystics and “Fight Test” and “Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots” from the album of the same name were apparently in the top 10.

Maybe Coyne’s decision to stray from the fan-picked set was necessary to save the audience from one of their more mediocre sets. Or maybe in between, the band skipped over obscure cuts from their 11 major label releases, which date back to the 1980’s. The Pitchfork crowd will never know the truth.

Set list controversy aside, the show was far from perfect. Their lulls between songs are sometimes longer than the songs themselves. Coyne is a showman at heart, but at times the constant and incessant crowd interaction becomes tiresome.

The band also often comes off as self-indulgent at times. “Fight Test,” “Yoshimi…” and the popular 1993 single “She Don’t Use Jelly” were extended with extra choruses added strictly for audience participation.

However, the performance was not a complete wash. The band was still flawless in execution. Lead guitarist, keyboardist and back up vocalist Steven Drozd is a mad man on stage. Constantly shifting between instruments and his helium-sounding vocals are a playful contrast to Coyne’s occasional self-righteousness.

The Flaming Lips’ two new songs were also quite electrifying to hear. The bass heavy rocker “Silver Trembling Hands” could easily become a crowd favorite once the new album is released. And the Miles Davis-meets-Jefferson Airplane psychedelic-jazz journey “Convinced Of The Hex” contains a raw energy not heard from the Lips since 1995’s Clouds Taste Metallic.

Though the Union Park sound ordinance cut the show short without an encore and ending before 10 p.m., the Flaming Lips succeeded in offering one of the most the most exhilarating concert experiences out right now. Their carnival stage antics and musical precision was undoubtedly a highlight on a weekend that was more about looking forward than about looking back.

Full Set list:
Race For The Prize
Silver Trembling Hands
Bad Days
Enthusiasm for Life Defeats Internal Existential Fear, Progressive
The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song
Fight Test
Convinced Of The Hex
Mountain Side
Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots Pt. 1
She Don’t Use Jelly
Do You Realize?

Editor’s Note: A full review of P4K Fest 2009 will be coming later this week. Stay Tuned.