CHRISTMAS ON MARS might be the Flaming Lips' bona fide sci-fi epic, but EMBRYONIC is the musical equivalent of the final scenes of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY: transformative chaos that results in a new start. From THE SOFT BULLETIN onward, the Lips seemed focused on tidying the loose ends of their earlier work, almost to the point of constraining themselves. Their wilder side is unleashed on Embryonic's 18 tracks, and the band sounds more off-the-cuff than it has in years -- some tracks are barely longer than snippets, others are rangy epics, and it all holds together so organically that listeners might wonder just how much these songs were edited.

Musically, EMBRYONIC is the least polite the Flaming Lips have been in nearly two decades, mixing in-the-red drums, blobby, dubby bass, squelchy wah-wah guitars, and sparkling keyboards into a swirl of sounds that are strangely liquid and abrasive at the same time. Occasionally, the band uses noise in an almost ugly way, as on "Convinced of the Hex," which scrapes eardrums with static and distortion before falling into a loose but driving Krautrock groove that adds to the song's tribal pull (complete with growling and wailing in the background). The Miles Davis-inspired "Aquarius Sabotage" opens fuzz bass and keyboards so chaotic, it isn't just free jazz, it's free-for-all jazz, while "Your Bats" is as soulful as it is noisy, piling roomy drums atop more delicate hand percussion, strings, and brass.

The Lips balance these confrontational tracks with calmer moments like the vocodered loveliness of "The Impulse " and "Gemini Syringes," an expansive respite that features "additional spoken announcements" by mathematician Thorsten Wormann. EMBRYONIC might not be a literal concept album, but it often plays like one. An astrology motif runs through the ultra-spacy "Virgo Self Esteem Broadcast" and the tumbling instrumental "Scorpio Sword," another track that suggests that the album's ultimate concept may be that chaos is a profound agent of change. It's also the Flaming Lips' most emotionally raw album, despite -- or perhaps because of -- its free-flowing nature. Wayne Coyne often sounds like he's singing from another dimension, musing on humankind's frailty with the wonder of an alien or a newborn on "If" and "The Sparrow Looks Up at the Machine."

This is also some of the band's most bittersweet work; on the beautiful "Powerless," Coyne sings "no one is ever really powerless," but the music dwells on the weighty implications of that thought rather than its potential freedom. Even the playful "I Can Be a Frog," which features Karen O as a one-woman noisemaker, is minor-key.

EMBRYONIC is clear-cut or straightforward -- these noisy, pensive, sometimes meandering songs take awhile to decipher and often feel like they're still in the process of becoming . These very qualities, however, make these songs some of the Flaming Lips most haunting and intriguing music in some time.


  Dear Agony CD
  by Breaking Benjamin
Our Price: $13.65 CD
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Breaking Benjamin's fourth foray into the crowded waters of early 21st century alternative metal/post-grunge feels a lot like their first three. That's good news for longtime fans of the brooding Pennsylvania quartet, who pound each of the 11 tracks on DEAR AGONY into submission like seasoned strongmen at a country carnival.

Front-loaded with the singles "Fade Away" and "I Will Not Bow" (the latter was featured in the murky Bruce Willis sci-fi film Surrogates), DEAR AGONY feels like a well-oiled machine, and producer David Bendeth, whose immaculate touch helped 2006's PHOBIA sell 131,000 copies in its first week, conjures much of the same magic here.

21st Century Breakdown CD
  by Green Day
Our Price: $11.16 CD / $10.89 mp3
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Still enamored of the concept of the concept album more than four years after AMERICAN IDIOT, Green Day unveiled its rock-opera sequel, 21ST CENTURY BREAKDOWN, in 2009. Like its predecessor, BREAKDOWN wholeheartedly embraces the iconic punk-pop act's shift to a stadium-filling sound, while also remaining loyal to the San Francisco-based trio's progressive sociopolitical outlook. Even with a president in the White House that outspoken frontman Billie Joe Armstrong supports, he still finds plenty to rail against, with much of BREAKDOWN alluding to the earlier Bush years of the new millennium, particularly the surging, Queen-like title track.

Aiding Armstrong and his comrades in their sonic attack against conservative authority is renowned producer (and Garbage member) Butch Vig, best known for helming Nirvana's NEVERMIND. Completely in sync with Green Day's grand vision, Vig helps to create the huge spaces for the band to construct their anthems, as best heard on the resonant anti-war tune "21 Guns."

Unabashedly unsubtle and lifted by passionate restlessness, BREAKDOWN succeeds as AMERICAN IDIOT Mark II, proving that Green Day has no intention of scaling back its intriguingly ambitious approach.