See Flaming Lips Perform ‘God and the Policeman’ on ‘Fallon’

Flaming Lips celebrated the release of American Head Friday by reentering their plastic bubbles to perform their new album’s “God and the Policeman” on The Tonight Show.

While the American Head version of “God and the Policeman” features Kacey Musgraves, the singer is absent on the Fallon rendition.

Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic and the American Head promotional cycle, Wayne Coyne and company have quarantined themselves and their audience in their own personal bubbles, starting with the band’s appearance on The Late Show in June and continuing through their videos for “Dinosaurs on the Mountain” and “Will You Return/When You Come Down.”

“You hate to say anything positive about the pandemic. We’ve all lost our jobs because we can’t go out and play concerts,” Wayne Coyne recently told IndieLand.

“But I feel optimistic that it’s allowed people to take a break from the onslaught of all the cool things that can occupy your attention. I don’t think the Black Lives Matter movement would have had as much power if there were all these other things going on. I was very glad that there were no concerts and no sporting events — nothing else in a way to say, ‘Yes, this could be the news.’”

Coyne added, “In the shadow of all that, I think some really powerful things are happening. I hope we don’t all just die like it’s the plague or something. I hope this is just a moment in our history and we learn a lot from it.”