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This was to have appeared in the Dec. But it didn’t.

In terms of flying under the Dec’s radar, the Flaming Lips rank up there with Grandaddy and the Microphones on the semi-infamous list of “Bands who released good albums that somehow failed to make the year-end top five issue.” Like The Sophtware Slump and The Glow, Part II, 1999’s The Soft Bulletin went unnoticed by Dec staffers until a belligerent group of students tied us down and made us listen. It was, to say the least, an enlightening and slightly erotic experience.

Actually, in 1999, I was still in high school, but the fact remains that The Soft Bulletin was one of the best albums to come out that year. Combining complex musical arrangements with off-beat lyrics (i.e., “odd,” not “without rhythm”), the Lips’ crazy musical style had only become more refined in the decade since Transmissions from the Satellite Heart and “She Don’t Use Jelly” brought them to the national spotlight. From the sparse beauty of “Suddenly Everything Has Changed” to the watch beep in “What is the Light?” (not to mention the lunacy of including remixes of some songs as bonus tracks), The Soft Bulletin presented pop rock as seen from the eyes of a sonic madman.

Though it contains no watch beeps, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots is a more than worthy successor to the Lips’ last album. There’d been talk of the band dramatically changing its sound, and it’s true–to a point. Like so many other bands, from Radiohead to list-brothers Grandaddy, the Flaming Lips have added electronic elements to their songs. Still, let’s face it: this is 2002, and boxed drum beats and starting a song’s hook on the previous track can’t really be called “experimental” any more (sorry, Wilco). This is, for better or for worse, the way the quieter rock is going these days. And it works: the new stuff never distracts from the music, instead feeling like just one more set of tricks that Wayne Coyne has in his already formidable bag.

At first glance, the album–which looks like it’s the Japanese import version with Kenji characters liberally scattered throughout the package–appears to be some sort of manga concept album. But it’s not so much a concept album as a concept EP surrounded by other material. Yoshimi opens with “Fight Test,” probably the most active and upbeat track on the album. A bouncy keyboard hook and layered vocals over the chorus draw you in to the record. Sure, I can’t figure out whether the Lips are advocating against pacificism, but it probably doesn’t matter. The Lips’ songs aren’t always about something; they just sound good (see also, “She don’t use butter / She don’t use cheese / She don’t use jelly / Or any of these . . .”). But more likely it’s intended to set up the title track later in the album.

And then sometimes they are: “Sympathy 3000-21 / One More Robot” takes the band very much into Grandaddy’s territory. Over a subdued bass beat, Coyne sings about a robot that tries to emulate emotions. “And a sense of coldness detaches,” he sings, “as it tries to comfort your sadness.” “Robot” captures the somewhat pathetic state of both a robot that tries and fails to emulate sympathy, and a human race that has become dependant on such robots. The titular song, divided into two tracks, is the most specifically manga-influenced song on the album. A young girl takes on giant robots that are attacking the city. Back-up vocalists and a funky drumbeat courtesy Steven Drozd turn what could be a depressing song into a very happy one. And then there’s the scratchy bass noises (to represent the robots, natch) that seem like they came straight from the old Super Nintendo game Earthbound (which also involved children fighting evil attacking robots; go figure). The second track could even have been one of the battle songs: the lyrics are listed simply as, “(screaming).”

As good as the manga/anime concept would have been stretched to album length, after “Yoshimi” the Lips just go back to making cool music. “In the Morning of the Magicians” is a meditation on the nature of love, and “Do You Realize??” on time and death. The entire album is much more subdued than past albums have been, even The Soft Bulletin, but that’s not a bad thing. Not even close to it: The Flaming Lips have made an album that is one of the best after-party albums since The Beta Band’s Hot Shots II, and one that is certainly in the running for at least one Dec staffers’ year end Best Of list.