Leave it to Oklahoma City’s space rock gods the Flaming Lips to bring us on their latest album, The Terror, an amazing homage to paranoid humanity. Perhaps some less familiar folks expected Wayne Coyne and company to follow up a string of poppy, (commercially successful), downright cute releases (The Soft Bulletin, Yoshimi, At War With The Mystics, Christmas on Mars), with more of the same- of course they were dead wrong.

The Terror, like the double album Embryonic that preceded it, is a much more serious consideration of the fact that, with or without love, life goes on. (Of course, this is a very simplified accounting of the band’s recent discography- readers may also want to check out “the gummy skull” releases, the collaborations with Neon Indian, Profuse 73, Yoko Ono, as well as the revamping of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and King Crimson’s In the Court of the Crimson King; this reviewer gave up keeping up with the totality of the prolific Lips a long, long time ago.)

Meditative by nature, The Terror album is not easy to digest and maybe not even that easy to listen to, but once committed, the listener will become lost and perhaps enthralled by beautiful electric soundscapes accompanied by Coyne’s high, strained-style vocals. In short, it’s dark, brilliant stuff that sets an interesting stage for the Flaming Lips’ next announced release, a joint effort with hip hop artist Lil Wayne called Lil Coyne.