*** 1/2 THOMAS DOLBY WITH THE LOST...

*** 1/2 THOMAS DOLBY WITH THE LOST TOY PEOPLE. “Aliens Ate My Buick.” EMI Manhattan.

Talk about your pendulum swings. Thomas Dolby’s biggest hit, 1983’s “She Blinded Me With Science,” branded him with a wacky-professor image in the eyes of much of the buying public. His next album, 1984’s sumptuous “The Flat Earth,” seemed designed in large part to dissipate that persona with its somber tones and themes. Now, with a long-awaited follow-up four years later, he’s shed his hard-earned crown of dignity and returned (regressed?) with a severe case of the sillies.

And what a gloriously danceable case of dementia it is. “Aliens Ate My Buick” finds Dolby throwing down the funk as convincingly as any white boy with an English accent and an egghead image has a right to, taking his cues from George Clinton (who contributed to the album in flesh as well as spirit) and Prince as well as the fusionary nasty bizness of Frank Zappa. Meanwhile, have we mentioned yet that Side 1 could be the party platter of the year?

The playfully misogynistic single “Airhead” may be the first potential dance smash in recent memory to celebrate intellectual pursuits over sexual attraction. But after he hilariously professes to prefer mind over body matter, in “The Ability to Swing” he goes for musical heat over heart, with his tongue only partly in cheek, paraphrasing the Book of Ellington: “Everybody thinking, thinking pretty hard / Everybody thinking ‘bout singing from the heart / If you want my opinion it doesn’t mean a thing / If you haven’t got that ability to swing.”

A rather brazen and suspect sentiment coming from Mr. Cerebral himself--but if this record is a little shorter than usual on emotion and maybe even art, by golly, it does swing like a third-grade recess.

CHECK LIST

**** Great Balls of Fire

*** Good Vibrations

** Maybe Baby

* Running on Empty