THE FLAMING LIPS
Embryonic

The Flaming Lips is everything a band could wish to be. Most people have at least a passing familiarity with the group, and those that do have usually spent at least a few minutes of their lives digging through one of its albums.

The band is hailed as a zeitgeist-encapsulating studio artist, and its mind-flaying live shows, filled with lasers, balloons and rabbit costumes, are almost always an experience that concert-goers reflect on with glassy-eyed reverence.

However, The Flaming Lips came under flak for its previous album, “At War with the Mystics,” because many saw it as undermining the band’s sprawling psychedelic roots – less of a cohesive album than a collection of self-contained pop singles.

Thus, new album “Embryonic” importantly confirms which direction the band will ride out of the aughts with. It is a happy confirmation of all the strange and enchanting landscapes of distortion and bass that made the band famous – and what had been wearing away since it hit big in 2002 with “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots.”

That being said, the album will be challenging for many. Fans will be used to the hurdles and confusion that feature in a first listen to a new Lips album. Newcomers may only latch onto tracks such as “Convinced of the Hex” and “See the Leaves” because the rest will take them a few days to ingest after previous single-style tracks like “W.A.N.D.” and “Do You Realize??”, which were positive, poppy listens.

But don’t let that turn you away. “Worm Mountain,” a jarring five-minute slow-burn jam of chorus backup, marching bass and old-tech radio effects is as emotionally stirring, if not more so, than anything on “Yoshimi” and resonates as effectively as anything from the band’s pre-pop roots.

VERDICT: “Embryonic” can be defined as a high-concept rock album, but the band is intense, and it’s channeling something magical that sets this album apart form the double-disc psych-rock of the ’70s.