The Flaming Lips have come a long way since 1999's unit-shifting The Soft Bulletin and 2006's At War With the Mystics, and all those happy-clappy, celebratory gigs featuring giant rubber hands and frontman Wayne Coyne in an inflatable globe. Returning to their experimental roots – with knobs on – The Terror sees their trademark pop melodies usurped by krautrock and a bleaker psychedelia, beams of sunlight replaced by enveloping gloom to create a melancholy odyssey. Band member Steven Drozd's substance abuse battles and Coyne's split with his partner after 25 years have influenced a mood which the singer describes as "embracing hopelessness". However, The Terror proves mesmeric rather than difficult. Guitar fragments, machines, mantras, spoken samples, echoes and drones are held together with some of the most killer hooks of their career. You Are Alone is sad but beautiful. There's no Do You Realize??-type grand anthem, but the brilliant, menacing, You Lust (which begins with Coyne's echoey threat, "You got a lot of nerve to fuck with me") and the desolate, lonely title track are as catchy as anything in the top 10.