The Apples in Stereo are playing tonight at the Black Cat, with Casper and the Cookies. Doors 8 p.m. $15.

“You know how casinos don’t have clocks so that people inside just space out and don’t worry about the time? We’re the positive musical equivalent of that.” This is how Apples in Stereo bassist and Alexandria native Eric Allen describes his band’s latest release, New Magnetic Wonder, to us last week.

And, truth be told, it’s an apt description. The album is a long-awaited return-to-form. It’s a real Record, an ambitious 24 song cycle that takes you back to the days when bands tackled this kind of project as a matter of principle. Allen will later use the term “head record,” as well as a number of synonyms for “spacing out” during our conversation, and with songs as immaculately textured as the slow-burn “Open Eyes,” the buzzing “7 Stars,” and the airy series “Mellotron 1-2”, it’s easy to see why.

It’s been a full five years since the band’s last release, 2002’s Velocity of Sound, a 29-minute fuzzball of a pop record that condensed the swirling psychedelia of previous releases into Ramones-influenced bubblegum-psych-punk. As Allen says, “It was us trying to kinda bridge the disconnect between our live sound and our records. We were just a four-piece rock and roll band, and we wanted a record that showed that.” But while bang-bang-rock-and-roll never really played to all the Apples’ strengths – save lead singer and songwriter Robert Schneider’s ear for sharp and simple hooks – New Magnetic Wonder finds the band trying to smash the clocks, ditch those dinky white iPod earpieces, and get back to a time when bands made “song-cycles” rather than “albums.”