Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips performs at Thompson’s Point on Thursday. Photo by Robert Ker

Confetti cleanup crews earned overtime this week, after the Flaming Lips brought their psychedelic circus through town for a sold-out concert at Thompson’s Point on July 25.

The longtime Oklahoma band boasts an impressive catalog of recorded music, extending from acid-drenched punk to indie-pop hits to experimental noisemaking, but has cemented its reputation with an extravagant live performance that continues to draw new fans after its studio output has slowed.

The concerts draw a bit from the anything-goes anarchy of Ken Kesey and the Grateful Dead’s 1960s acid tests and colorful art-happenings of Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground’s 1960s Exploding Plastic Inevitable, blending it with the fluorescent glow and sunshine ecstasy of 1990s rave culture. They combine state-of-the-art technology, like massive LED screens, with the do-it-yourself mentality that you can create a sense of wonder with confetti and balloons from a quick trip to Party City.

The Lips traveled here in extended celebration of the 20th anniversary of their 2002 album “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots,” a concept album that – like much of their best material – filters heavy concepts of grief and perseverance with a healthy sense of awe for nature and respect for life, in this case conveyed through a very loose narrative about a young Japanese woman fighting evil pink robots. The first set of music comprised this album in full. While full-album sets often fail, because albums are not structured like concerts, the Yoshimi set bucked this trend thanks to the album’s unique sequencing. The hits are spread out across the recording, and instrumental passages at the beginning and end of the album offer a sense of flow and resolution.

The second set of the concert offered a wider sampling of material from throughout the band’s career, though this set concentrated heavily on their 1999 masterpiece, “The Soft Bulletin,” and the 2006 Yoshimi follow-up, “At War With the Mystics.” While longstanding fans might prefer for the band to explore their robust discography beyond their popular 1999-2006 period, on this evening they only offered two such songs: the 1993 crossover hit “She Don’t Use Jelly” and a sampling of their most recent album, 2020’s “American Head,” with “Flowers of Neptune 6.”

The songs were all elevated by a celebratory visual presentation that flashed the lyrics on a giant screen, fired laser lights into the audience and bathed the stage in popsicle hues of orange and pink. The band made great use of inflatable props, from the bubble that singer Wayne Coyne frequently performed inside to a large rainbow that tempered the fatalism of their beloved anthem “Do Your Realize??” with a sheen of optimism to eerie eyeballs that danced along to “The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song.”

The four towering pink robots that sandwiched the stage during parts of the Yoshimi set seemed less a luxury than a necessity. The spectacle gifted a contagious joy to the concertgoers and even to the region – if someone you knew went to the show, then the chances are high you saw it in your Instagram feed. And why not? Few artists strive to offer a good, old-fashioned freak-out like this anymore, and Portlanders sure do love it.

Robert Ker is a freelance writer in Portland. He can be reached at bobzker@gmail.com.