lthough the Flaming Lips’ last album, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots got a lot of praise, it also received more than its fair share of flak -- mostly from the same hipper-than-thou quarters where indie kids nightly bend down and pray at the altar of The Soft Bulletin. It’s almost inevitable: make one great, universally loved record, and the next one’s gonna be reviled, no matter what it sounds like. When it comes right down to it, Yoshimi’s one sin was being merely good rather than great (not that it’s hurt the Lips any, what with them turning up in all kinds of unexpected places thanks to the WB’s aggressive marketing). Yoshimi has been the group’s route to a shaky pseudo-mainstream success (and only 10 years after "She Don’t Use Jelly" was an oddball hit), but its synth-bass grooves and uber-poppy moves haven’t sat as well with many longtime fans.


But that crazy Wayne Coyne, he just don’t care, and the band’s new Fight Test EP delivers more Yoshimi-style confections for those of us who can find nearly as much pleasure in the band’s latest (re-)incarnation as we did in the acid punk days of yore. The single to Yoshimi’s best song, the meat of this brief set (and the real bait to catch collector scum like me) is three live covers taken from the recent promo-only Yoshimi Wins EP.


The best -- and by far the least expected -- is the band’s deadly serious take on Kylie Minogue’s appropriately named "Can’t Get You Out of My Head." While Kylie gave the song an infectious bounce and airy club atmosphere (all the better to get those "la la las" stuck in your cranium for days at a time), Coyne sings it as a melancholy lament that wouldn’t have been too out of place on The Soft Bulletin or Yoshimi, reading into the bitter longing and resentment hidden in the lyrics. When he slowly drawls "no I just can’t get you out of my head/ your love is all I think about," it drives home that the song isn’t a celebration of love as it sometimes seemed in Kylie’s sly, sexy delivery. Coyne really draws out the darker side of the song: it’s about relationships lost and shattered, and possibly the creepy period of obsession that always follows. That’s why the "la la las" on this version aren’t quite as catchy; they pack an eerie power that merely sounds sad and resigned.


The other two covers don’t fare quite as well (and really, how could you top that?), but they still do a good job of Lip-ifying the songs they tackle. Touring partner Beck’s "The Golden Age," with its soaring strings and quirky moodiness, is perfectly suited to the Lips to begin with, and they adapt it by just amping it up a bit. The slight changes are welcome ones, too, largely excising the maudlin theatrics that Beck gave the song on his Sea Change album. A run-through of Radiohead’s "Knives Out" is more problematic, since the song really doesn’t suit the Lips’ style quite as well as their other cover choices. Again, they don’t do much to alter the song, just adding some shrieking guitar distortion and leaning heavy on the moody piano. It’s decent, but doesn’t really have anything on the original (which doesn’t have much room for improvement).


As far as new material, the EP is a little stingier. There’s a "Floating in Space" remix of "Do You Realize" by Scott Hardkiss, which vacillates neatly between the dancefloor and the living room, but at nine minutes long without really adding much new to the song, it’s probably a definite skip after the first time you hear it. The only two truly new songs come at the end of the EP, and they’re exactly the kind of fluffy-but-kinda-cool outtakes you’d expect to show up on a CD like this. "The Strange Design of Conscience" finds the band exploring electronic elements more thoroughly than ever before, while "Thank You Jack White (For the Fiber-optic Jesus That You Gave Me)" is a charmingly Coynesque little tale that appropriates the faux-blues style of its title character’s White Stripes. Coyne’s acoustic guitar and off-key vocals -- recalling in their simplicity the Lips’ earliest recordings for Warner -- close things out on an upbeat note.