As they enter their second quarter-century of existence as a band, the Flaming Lips stand astride a trail of highly influential material that, for all its weak spots, assures them a place in the pantheon of great musicians. Although their work often explicitly admits an intense grounding in traditional rock influences -The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd-the Lips have a certain elusive quality that sets them apart. Wayne Coyne's unmistakable voice must have something to do with it, as do the band's subtle and eccentric production details (harp strums, theremin and tornado sirens, to take my favorite examples). Add to this their famously bizarre stage theatrics, and it is clear that the Oklahoma-based foursome has crafted a unique identity transcending the music itself.Equipped with this bag of tricks, the Flaming Lips could have easily given up on releasing anything worthwhile without any concern about losing their credibility. The task of following up on the ingenious 1999 album The Soft Bulletin is surely daunting enough to drive an artist into hibernation, if not early retirement. And indeed, I was less than impressed by their output in the 10 years since, which has consisted of 2002's uneven Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots and the insipid 2006 album At War with the Mystics. But with Embryonic, their newest studio album-and the 12th in their career as a band-the Lips reaffirm their ineffable, but obvious, gifts as musicians.

In a recent interview, Coyne colorfully asserted that the album "sounds like John Lennon, . if he got together with Miles Davis and they went back in time, but there was a supercomputer that they could figure out how to work." This is somehow startlingly accurate. The Lips' usual science-fiction motifs and robot sketches are all over Embryonic, but this time they seem less risible than in the past (see "Race for the Prize," off The Soft Bulletin) and more in tune with the sound on the record. Seriously, this album plays like it could have been recorded on a spaceship. The opening track, "Convinced of the Hex," assembles an eerie tableau of '60s psychedelia replete with drums in overdrive, crisp metallic guitar notes that chirp and scream like mechanical creatures and monotone vocals that sound, well, robotic. At the opposite end of the noise spectrum and of the album, "The Impulse" employs a Kanye West-esque device that is best described as a human voice transmogrified by an electric accordion or, perhaps more aptly, robots harmonizing in the midst of a mellow high.

For all its cohesiveness, the album does make a few much-needed deviations from the spaceship narrative at points. Fans of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs will love "I Can Be a Frog," in which Yeahs singer Karen O squawks animal sounds through a telephone receiver, giggling with evident pleasure all the while. "If" is another cute quasi-song seemingly placed on the record by happy accident. As Coyne's voice sweetly reaches to the upper registers, careful listeners will catch the sounds of chairs creaking and muffled coughs, as well as the electric piano keys being pressed, thus adding a degree of intimacy that rarely surfaces in the Lips' highly produced recent work.

Debatably, the standout on Embryonic is "Worm Mountain," a scintillating jam recorded with indie-pop stars MGMT. There is an overwhelmingly cathartic energy to this song, which features undulating fuzz bass contortions and shouted vocals that, in total, evoke a satanic dance party. In contrast to these head-banging rhythms, "Evil" plays to the historic strengths of the band: beautiful string arrangements, ethereal vocal harmonies and synth sounds that mimic honing radar. Midway through the song, the sweet arpeggio that repeats (in perhaps unconscious homage to "Burning of the Midnight Lamp") is suddenly threatened by the loud, discordant buzzes of a foreboding electronic machine. Here, as Coyne laments "I wish I could go back in time," the album returns to the uncanny setting of a spaceship, and it becomes clear that escape is purely mental and fleeting.

That frightening sense of doom and powerlessness hovers throughout the album, and it represents a new posture for the Flaming Lips. "See the Leaves," for instance, is a dark chant that could be about either winter or climate change. The apocalyptic lyrics on this song match relentlessly crashing cymbals and damaged, distorted chords played on a Fender Rhodes electric piano. Here as elsewhere on the album, the Lips directly invoke the atonal and chaotic fusion of 1969 to '70 Miles Davis.

But to speak of "songs" on Embryonic would be somewhat misleading, since the album wanders through a succession of soundscapes and themes. Certain moods and moments, right down to specific noises, recur throughout the 70-minute album. Several tracks start off with nothing more than a simple bass line that repeats for several measures before there is any further development. In fact, this structure characterizes so many of the tracks on Embryonic that the listener has an unusually difficult time distinguishing the songs by their names. Short sound clips of a German mathematician speaking in disconnected phrases appear at various points. Above all, this repeating device underscores the claustrophobic tension that makes Embryonic such a haunting listen. If for no other reason than that, this is a rare contemporary record that one ought to play from its beginning to its conclusion.